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Jeanette Vondersaar
Born	(1951-05-17) May 17, 1951 Indianapolis, Indiana
Nationality	American
Occupation(s)	Dancer, choreographer

Jeanette Vondersaar (May 17, 1951) is best known as a principal dancer with the Dutch National Ballet (1977-1994) and, since 2010, as répétiteur, supervisor and stager for Kurt Jooss' anti-war ballet The Green Table.

Early life and education

Vondersaar was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, to Tatiana, aka Jane, and Albert Leroy "Lee" Vondersaar. She is of Polish, Russian and Cherokee ancestry. Her mother, born in Poland to a Polish father and a mother of Russian descent, was a founder of Russian Heritage, a Florida-based organization that preserves, promotes and educates the public on Russian history and culture, and provides funding for related charitable causes. In 2005, Representative Gus Bilirakis awarded Tatiana Vondersaar a Congressional Medal for her patriotism and contributions to American life.

Vondersaar's father served in the Coast Guard during World War II and later worked as an engineering expert in the tool and die industry. She has three brothers and two sisters. Her older sister Margo is married to American billionaire businessman John Catsimatidis.

Vondersaar began studying ballet at age 8 through the Jordan College of Fine Arts Special Instruction Division at Butler University. Her teachers included Jack Copeland, Karl Kaufman and George Verdak. In the early 1960s, she performed in several Footlite Musicals productions, among them The King and I, South Pacific, Oklahoma, The Music Man and Carousel.

While at Butler, she was awarded a Margaret Sear Rosenblith scholarship, which helps fund outstanding student dancers. In 1966, she accepted a scholarship to Harkness House for Ballet Arts, the school of Harkness Ballet, and moved to New York City.

Dance career

Vondersaar was selected for Harkness Youth Dancers, a junior company of Harkness Ballet, in 1968. After a debut in Central Park, the company of 17 dancers toured throughout New York, New Jersey, New England, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Texas in 1969 and 1970.

While with the troupe, Vondersaar was photographed by Jack Robinson for an Isadora Duncan-inspired fashion feature published in Vogue (August 1969).

When Harkness Youth Dancers became the new Harkness Ballet, Vondersaar was made a featured soloist. (The first Harkness Ballet, founded in 1964 with core members from Joffrey Ballet, was dissolved in 1970 and re-established using dancers trained at Harkness House.) The company toured Europe before a 1972 U.S. debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. Vondersaar danced the world premiere of the revamped company's Firebird ballet, choreographed by Brian MacDonald, at the event. The company disbanded permanently the following year.

After a year with Zürich Opera Ballet, she joined The Dutch National Ballet as a soloist in 1976. Her rise to principal dancer came shortly afterward.

Vondersaar took the lead in many classical ballets, including Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Giselle, Romeo and Juliet, Apollo, Ètudes, Theme and Variations, The Firebird, and pas de deux from Le Corsaire and Don Quixote. She also performed modern works: Martha Graham's Lamentation and Diversion of Angels, as well as pieces by the company's three resident choreographers Rudi van Dantzig's Onder Mijne Voeten (Under My Feet); Toer van Schayk's Life and Faun, and Hans van Manen's Pose and 5 Tangos.

As part of a special production in 1978, she danced three performances of Faun with Rudolf Nureyev.

An illustrated book, Cry of the Firebird, Jeanette Vondersaar, Profile of a Dancer. An Album in 5 Parts was published in 1977. It covers her career from childhood musical appearances to her position as a soloist with Dutch National Ballet.

Reviews

Jeanette Vondersaar handled the bouncy demands of the “Shakers” solo confidently, throwing off flurries of energetic gesture while moving relentlessly through the somewhat dogged rhythm of the piece.

In her review of Hans van Manen's duet Piano Variations II, New York Times critic Anna Kisselgoff described Vondersaar as "a full-bodied dramatic dancer, giving every movement its complete shape."

Of her performance in Ben Stevenson's Three Preludes, a reviewer wrote, "Miss Vondersaar is at one moment all grace and softness, at the next, sharp and angular."

As a choreographer

Po Mo d'Or jazzy

Post performing

Vondersaar began teaching in 1980, long before she considered retiring from the stage. As an instructor and coach, she worked with Dutch National Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater, Introdans, Krisztina de Châtel, Scapino Ballet, Ballet Arizona, The Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Israel Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, Stadtheater Bern, Aalto Ballet Theatre and American Ballet Theatre, among others.

Once past her performing prime, Vondersaar continued to dance with Dutch National Ballet in character roles: Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, Bathilde in Giselle, The Queen Mother in Sleeping Beauty and others. Vondersaar told a reporter, "Not everyone wants to do it, but I just thought it was a nice idea" and a way to "wind down my dancing career" while keeping touch with the company.

In 1994, she received the VSCD (Association of Theatres and Concert Halls Directors) Golden Theatre Dance Prize. On awarding the honor, the jury said, “She has remarkable technique and enormous energy. Her inner drive and sensual, temperamental presence make her a powerful female soloist." The same year, she was presented with the Alexandra Radius Prize from Friends of Dutch National Ballet. https://www.operaballet.nl/en/history-dutch-national-ballet#the-70s

She was Ballet Mistress for the company from 1994-1996.

The Green Table

Vondersaar first saw Kurt Jooss' The Green Table as a Harkness trainee in the 1960s. The Joffrey Ballet had revived the 1932 work at the height of the Vietnam War, first presenting it at Manhattan's City Center on March 9, 1967.

She would go on to regularly dance the role of "The Partisan" in Dutch National Ballet productions. She worked briefly with Jooss himself on the ballet, but was coached primarily by his eldest daughter Anna Markhard.

In 1996, when the piece was being taped for Dutch television, Markhard gave Vondersaar the option of dancing or assisting her with the staging. Vodersaar chose the latter. For years, she assisted Marhard in preserving her father's legacy. travel With Markhard's 2010 death, Vondersaar took on the task of keeping the ballet alive.

She says:

It’s a huge honour, but also a tremendous responsibility. Because unfortunately we’re seeing again today the atrocities induced by war and conflict. The Green Table gives people plenty of food for thought. The fate of refugees, people who profit from war, the futility of violence: Jooss incorporated all of that into his ballet. So it’s my job to ensure the work is performed at the highest possible standard, because only then does it have the intended effect.

Personal life

At age 18, Vondersaar married fellow Harkness Youth Dancer Gary Wahl. They divorced a few years later. She later became the life partner of former Dutch National Ballet soloist René Vincent. https://theaterencyclopedie.nl/wiki/Jeanette_Vondersaar

External links

• Video fragment from Life (1979)
• Spotlight on The Green Table''

References

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Janice Blue
Born	Janice Ellen Chrabas (1942-08-17) August 17, 1942 Utica, New York
Education	Penn State University
Occupation(s)	Activist, journalist, filmmaker
Movement	Feminism
Spouse	James Blue ​ ​ (m. 1968; div. 1977)​

Janice Ellen Blue (born August 17, 1942) is an American activist, journalist and documentary filmmaker.

Early life and education

Blue is one of three children born to New York antiques collectors and dealers Marion and Frank Chrabas. Marion owned and managed two antique shops, one in Yorkville, the other in Utica, where Blue was born. The couple traveled widely and enjoyed trips to visit friends and family in Poland.

Blue went to elementary school at St. Mary's Parochial School in New York Mills, NY, and Whitesboro High School, Whitesboro, NY (1956-60). In high school, she served as a class officer all four years and was a member of three press clubs. She attended Penn State University from 1960 to 1963, graduating at age 20 with a BA in psychology.

Filmmaking

In the mid-1960s, Blue discovered films, foreign films in particular. She spent her days working at the Library of Congress film archives, her nights watching "simple, pure, human" black and white films such as Knife in the Water and Jules and Jim at D.C.'s Circle Theatre. She wanted to make similar work.

In 1966, she quit her job and traveled abroad for a year with the intention of enrolling in Poland's Na­tional Film School at Lodz. Besides the cost ($3,000 at the time), she was dissuaded from attending by the school's administrators, who did not understand why she would not want to study film at UCLA. She wound up teaching briefly at a university in Krakow.

When Blue returned to the states, she first worked for a firm that selected documentary films for festivals, then for the American Film Institute's (AFI) grant program. In a 1978 interview she said, "We would screen 500 films quarterly. Few women applied, much less received money...Looking back, I'm sure my sense of injustice had roots here."

She met filmmaker James Blue in 1968. At the time he was making the Academy-Award nominated A Few Notes on our Food Problem. They married in Washington, D. C. on Thanksgiving Day of the same year. Soon after, the couple moved to Houston, Texas.

Despite her husband's initial reluctance to support her film career, he bought her a Super 8 camera for their trip to Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan. She began making home movies and films of their travels. In 1972, she joined James four months into his trip to Kenya where he was shooting a documentary on the Boran, a traditional African tribe experiencing the upheaval of modernization. Uneasy around Western men laden with camera equipment, the women did not want to be filmed. As a woman, Janice was able to gain their trust and encourage them to speak freely, an experience that led to her films about women and participation in the femi­nist movement.

Filmography

Blue's first film was about her grandmother, the matriarch of the family some referred to as "the general." When her grandmother had a stroke shortly afterward, the film being the only record of her life, Blue realized the importance of documentation. "Women were ignored in written history," she once told a reporter, "I was afraid we wouldn't have a visual one either."

• Caucus - In February 1973, the National Women's Political Caucus held it's first convention in 100 years at the Rice Hotel in Houston. In advance of the caucus, Blue asked the public TV station if they would be covering the event. When they expressed no interest, Blue learned to record with 1/2" video tape, which was state of the art at the time. Culled from 10 hours of footage, Blue's hour-long film Caucus is the only extended record of the event. On October 6, 1973, Blue showed the documentary at the Women's Film and Drama Festival at the University of Texas.

From the program notes for the festival: "Blue has recorded this historic occasion in an extraordinary, spirited documentary that represents one of the most unusual contemporary statements of its kind. It does not avoid the conflicts, even the occasional turmoil which emerged during that convention, conflicts which all serious movements inevitably experience when they attempt to build something lasting. The candid portraits of women we see voicing their differences with each other or with society underscore an important quality of this work, its essential honesty..."

For Blue, the "heroine" of Caucus is Mary-k Wilson. At the time of the convention, it was against Rice Hotel policy for women to be paged in the lobby. That is, until Wilson, the convention coordinator, discovered the rule and someone leaked it to the media. Though the leak's source was never proven, Wilson was fired. Despite the fact 5,000 convention delegates protested her dismissal, she did not get her job back either. (The policy had been suspended during the three days of the caucus.) The film finds her alone in her apartment a week after the event, "a rather reluctant feminist as she reflects on her first act of protest."

As Mary-k sits quietly with her cat, Blue asks how she felt to have the support of so many women. "With 5,000 women to stand behind you ... Well, I put on my National Women's Political Caucus t-shirt and I felt like Mary Marvel ... Ordinarily, I'm just not that brave." Film critic Estelle Changas wrote, her "simple humility, her attempt to dispel any notion that she has demonstrated personal courage adds to the poignancy of the scene and makes it one of the most candid, affecting moments we may see on film."

For the next two years, Blue traveled across the country with Caucus showing it at universities and once at an ethnographic conference at the Smithsonian Institution. It first aired on television, on the public broadcasting station KUHT, in November 1977, during the National Women's Conference in Houston.

Blue served in the multiple roles of director, editor and camerawoman on two more films:

• Cousins documented the impressions of 2 to 17 year-old girls on the role of women in the American Dream.

• Gena at 7 & 11 was a personal record of a brain-damaged child from the point of view of the mother.

In addition to her own documentaries, Blue assisted others with theirs.

• Farenthold: A Texas Chronicle - After "Caucus" premiered, Blue, Estelle Changas and Kay Loveland submitted a proposal to the AFI for a documentary on the 1974 Texas gubernatorial campaign of Frances "Sissy" Farenthold. When they were refused funding, Changas and Loveland raised the money themselves. Blue loaned them the 16mm camera equipment and filmed the project. The completed documentary was released in 1976.

• Fire on the Water - She was Associate Producer for the 1982 film exploring the conflict between native Texas shrimpers and the Vietnamese refugees fishing the same grounds.

The National Organization for Women Media Reform Task Force

Blue joined the Women's Movement in the early 1970s. She had initially been put off by feminists, thinking them as "violent" and "raving-mad" as TV stereotypes portrayed them. The 1973 convention was a turning point. After taping Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, Liz Carpenter and others, she put aside her reservations, realizing these women had broken down barriers for her. She wanted to give back to the movement and in a form that involved the media. She joined the Harris County Women's Political Caucus and the local chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW).

Her first project was the coordination of a film festival of women directors at Rice University's media center, where her husband was director. Over a 10-week period, she held screenings on Sunday nights to standing room only crowds. She showed work by better-known filmmakers, such as Ida Lupino and Agnes Varda, and introduced her audience to lesser-known (at the time) directors: Dorothy Arzner, Věra Chytilová and Maya Deren.

KPRC settlement

By late 1973, Blue was working with NOW's Media Reform Task Force. The Houston branch contended the public owns the airwaves and that broadcasters, who lease them from the government, can lose their licenses if they are not responsive to the community. Blue and the task force took on Houston's NBC affiliate, KPRC, claiming the station did not sufficiently represent women. KPRC had the worst record for women employed and the station's general manager had been recorded making hostile remarks toward women.

In December 1973, a year before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandated stations to include women, Blue's group met with KPRC representatives. When they asked about the station's affirmative action program, they were told the FCC did not require them to include women. "Minorities, yes. Women, no."

Though National NOW had been successful in license renewal and challenge contests, Blue and her contingent stopped short of that action, signing an agreement instead. The settlement provided for a Women's Advisory Council and increase of shows for women.

• Just Like a Woman - In line with the agreement, Blue and fellow advisory council member Rhonda Boone produced a pilot for a 30-minute magazine-style program Just Like a Woman in April 1975.

KPRC supplied equipment, technical assistance and paid production costs, except for the salaries of women working on the project. The pilot contained segments on a couple sharing work inside and outside their home, including caring for the baby, cooking and sewing; a demonstration on how to change a tire and make other auto repairs; an interview with an alcoholic who discussed the problems she faced and an exchange with one of the Philadelphia Eleven, the first group of women ordained as Episcopal priests.

The station had agreed to produce two shows, after which Blue and Boone would need to find commercial sponsors. The reviews were excellent, but no Houston corporation had the courage to fund it. Shell, Texaco, Conoco, Southwestern Bell and Foley's all declined although the women asked for only $3,000 for five months work for five people.

Some progress did result from the protest. A month after the first meeting in 1973, the station hired its first female hard news reporter; two months later, another woman reporter was added. A woman anchor was on the air by April 1974.

National Association of Broadcasters Convention

In March 1974, Blue was the national NOW spokesperson at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Houston. NAB had included only five women on its three-day program. She led a women's demonstration outside the meeting hall. They carried placards reading "NBC: When Will Women Meet the Press?," "Soap is Dope, Stop Soap Addiction" and "Annul the Newlywed Game."

Blue told a reporter on the scene, the protestors wanted to alert broadcasters to "women's legitimate complaints about programming, the dreadfully low employment rate of women in broadcasting, and the low visibility of women in news reporting". The protests received local and national TV coverage.

FCC Hearings

In April 1974, as NOW's spokesperson, Blue testified before Congress during hearings on the appointment of former Baptist minister Luther Holcomb to the FCC.

A team from national NOW helped Blue and Kathy Bonk, NOW Task Force on Broadcast Media, prepare their testimony against Rev. Holcomb. At the time, the FCC had one woman on the seven-member commission. In her remarks, Blue protested "the exclusion of feminists, women and men, from the FCC, and the severe underrepresentation of women, regardless of their views, on the commission."

She went on to say she and Bonk were not personally attacking Holcomb, but were questioning the process by which he had been nominated. She cited political cronyism as the basis on which he was selected rather than his "professional ability and sensitivity to human needs." Only two senators, Hart and Baker, asked Blue and Bonk questions. One senator slept through the testimony.

The Washington Post gave credibility to the women's testimony. Two weeks later the paper reported that Holcomb withdrew his name because his connection with President Nixon became problematic.

Houston Breakthrough: Where Women Are News

Blue met business woman Gabrielle Cosgriff in the early 1970s while working on NOW's Media Reform Task Force. Tired of seeing women's news ignored or trivialized in the press, and on television and radio, they decided to start their own paper to improve the image of women in the media. Houston Breakthrough was intended to give women's news the attention it deserved at a time when traditional papers relegated it to a "women's section."

The publication's title was taken from the landmark feminist novel La Brecha (Breakthrough) written by Chilean author Mercedes Valdivieso two years before Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.

The weekly was primarily a political newspaper. It contained information on legislation affecting women and articles on women's issues: childcare, single parenting, abortion, rape, displaced homemakers and violence in the schools. But, Blue and Cosgriff considered Breakthrough an alternative newspaper, noting all issues are women's issues. The paper operated as a volunteer effort with more than 500 writers, photographers, artists, news carriers and sales people giving of their time.

Men worked on the paper and made up 8% of the readership.

The first issue ran in January 1976. The date was chosen to coincide with the start of the U.S. Bicentennial year. Two weeks afterward, Breakthrough sponsored two public forums at Rice Media Center, What Makes Women's News News? and Are Those Ads That Bad? in an all-day dialogue between members of the media and the community.

The last issue covered December/January 1980/81. Instead of a November 1977 issue, Breakthrough produced three daily issues during the International Women's Year Conference. Blue and staff raised advertising revenues to pay for 30,000 copies each day, which were distributed free of charge to the delegates.

In 1979, the show Breakthrough on the Air launched on KPFT radio. Initially, it covered similar news to the print edition. When the newspaper ceased publication in 1981, it changed hosts and format but kept the same name.

Animal Rights Activism

As part of her fight for justice for the underdog, Blue is a long-time animal rights activist. She hosted a weekly radio show, Go Vegan Texas! from 2002 to 2008 on KPFT, Houston's Pacifica station. Guests included environmentalist and animal rights activist, Anthony Marr; founder of Cornwall's Voice for Animals, Mary Alice Pollard; and author of The World Peace Diet, Will Tuttle.

In 2005, she organized an animal rescue mission to Hurricane Katrina-devastated New Orleans. Together with other station hosts, she spread the word about needed supplies for the city's displaced animals. The community responded overwhelmingly, donating provisions that filled a 32' horse trailer and both the bed and cab of a large pickup truck.

Janice and two volunteers drove all night to Louisiana. The supplies they brought were shared by several shelters. Among the donations were 17 wire crates with which she transported 17 displaced Katrina dogs back to Houston, finding homes for all of them.

The experience led to a full-time commitment to rescue work and formation of the non-profit True Blue Friends Rescue and Sanctuary (2005-2017). Blue would visit shelter "death rows", adopting dogs and cats. During its years of operation, Blue found permanent homes for more than 500 displaced and abandoned animals.

Veteran Feminists of America Pioneer Histories and other archived materials

In March 2010, Blue was interviewed for the Veteran Feminists of America's Pioneer Histories Project, which honors activists of the Second Wave feminist movement, women who "literally changed the world." The two-part video is available on the organization's YouTube channel.

She is cited as a member of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP), founded by Donna Allen. WIFP members include Passages author Gail Sheehy; Gloria Steinem and Patricia Carbine, founders of Ms. magazine; Women and Madness author Phyllis Chesler; Susan Brownmiller, author of Against Our Will; and Sisterhood is Powerful author Robin Morgan. Houston Breakthrough is included in the WIFP directory of women's media.

The near-complete run of Houston Breakthrough is preserved in the University of Houston Libraries Special Collections. Most are digitized and available online at Houston LGBT History.org.

Audio cassettes, correspondence and personal papers from her time with James Blue are located in his archives, The James Blue Project, at The University of Oregon Libraries Special Collections.

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Lone Isaksen
Born	1941 Copenhagen, Denmark
Died	New York, New York
Nationality	Danish
Occupation	Dancer

Lone Isaksen (born 1941) was a Danish ballerina known for bringing a distinctive mix of traditional classical training and fierce projection to contemporary works in American dance companies such as the Harkness Ballet and Joffrey Ballet.

Early Life and education

Isaksen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark on November 30, 1941 (NYT). She studied at the Royal Danish Ballet school and took private lessons with Edite Feifer Frandsen.

Houston Breakthrough Background

Blue and Cosgriff were members of the National Organization for Women's Media Reform Task Force. Tired of seeing women's news ignored or trivialized in the press, and on television and radio, the pair launched the publication to improve the image of women in the media. Breakthrough was designed to give women's news the attention it deserved at a time when traditional papers relegated it to a "women's section."

The publication's title was taken from the landmark feminist novel La Brecha (Breakthrough) written by Chilean author Mercedes Valdivieso two years before Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.

The weekly was primarily a political newspaper. It contained information on legislation affecting women and articles on women's issues: childcare, single parenting, abortion, rape, displaced homemakers and violence in the schools. But, Blue and Cosgriff considered it an alternative newspaper, noting "all issues are women's issues." The paper operated as a volunteer effort with more than 500 writers, photographers, artists, news carriers and sales people giving of their time.

Men worked on the paper and made up 8% of the readership.

The first issue ran in January 1976. The date was chosen to coincide with the start of the U.S. Bicentennial year. The last issue covered December 1980/January 1981. Instead of a November 1977 issue, Breakthrough staff produced three daily issues during the International Women's Year Conference. Blue and Cosgriff raised advertising revenues to pay for 30,000 copies each day, which were distributed free of charge to the delegates.

In 1977, the staff took a survey of Breakthrough's readers. Responses showed 92% were female; of those 91% were white/Anglo, 5% black and 2% brown/Hispanic. In the age category, 4% were 18 to 25 years old, 60% were 25 to 45, and 23% were older than 45. Forty-four percent had a master's degree or above, 36%, a bachelor's degree, 17%, some college, and 1%, a high school education. Fifty-eight percent were employed full-time. Ninety-four percent had voted in the previous election.

The paper's fifth anniversary issue was also its last. The founders expressed regret, as well as a sense of accomplishment, noting they had filled a need in the community that had been neglected by the local press. Breakthrough had always operated with limited resources, the founders wrote, "To continue publication would demand more personal and financial commitments than we are able to afford."

A near-complete run of the paper has been digitized and is available online.

References

Category:Second-wave feminism in the United States Category:Newspapers established in 1976 Category:Defunct newspapers published in Texas Category:1981 disestablishments in Texas

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Floyd Newsum
Born	1950 Memphis, Tennessee
Nationality	American
Education	Memphis College of Art Temple University
Known for	Painting Sculpture Printmaking
Movement	Black Arts Movement

Floyd Newsum (born 1950) is an American artist known for his large colorful, childlike paintings filled with personal iconography and West African motifs. He is also noted for several large public sculptures in Houston and Ft. Worth, Texas.

Early Life and education

Newsum was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1950. His father was the first black firefighter in the city. Newsum's parents were involved in Memphis' Civil Rights Movement; he himself had ties to a chapter of the Black Panther Party. His brother H. Ike Okafor-Newsum is also a painter and sculptor.

Newsum received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1973 from Memphis College of Art (formerly Memphis Academy of Arts) and his Master of Fine Arts degree from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in 1975. During his time in art school, Newsum was influenced by the Black Arts Movement.

Career

Newsum's work has been featured in more than 103 solo and group exhibitions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Arts, Pennsylvania; the Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio; the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, Louisiana, the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas; the Polk Museum, Lakeland, Florida; the David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland, College Park; the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and other venues across the United States. He has exhibited internationally at the Califia Gallery, Horazdovice, Czech Republic; and the American Center in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Floyd Newsum’s works are in the permanent collections of museums like the Smithsonian National Museum of African History and Culture, Washington DC, open in September 2016 with one work on display. "Floyd Newsum has two paintings acquired by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture which opens in September, 2016. His work can be seen in many private collections around the country and many museum collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

Since 1976, Newsum has taught art at the University of Houston-Downtown.

Works

Newsum usually paints on paper, which is then sometimes mounted on canvas. During his artistic career, he has explored numerous styles. His early work largely consists of highly detailed, realistic watercolor portraits. At some point, he abandoned realism in favor of a more surrealistic approach. These richly-colored paintings feature personal, perhaps unconscious, symbols set in complex, loosely defined spaces.

Newsum's latest work demonstrates the influence of West African art in his work. His work is often lled with a signature combination of marks, and abstract patterns along with fish, birds, and ladders. His compositional style generally feels childlike; however, his subject matter centers on cultural climates, political statements, and world events. The contrast of his naive style and serious state of the world focus lend a multi-dimensional quality to his work. In his own words, Newsum has said "I want to provoke thought or conjecture from the viewer. My paintings are a collection of thoughts in a single composition, with the power to present more than one interpretation.

Symbols like the dog, the fish, the bird and the ladder have followed me since the '60s. ongoing interest in Ghanaian village of Sirigu. I like layering and weaving elements together for the viewer, leaving them pieces to discover on their own," he said. "When you look around, you start to find things here and there. Sometimes you see old pictures of my family members buried into a piece, like a photo of an aunt on my father's side or a great-uncle. The meaning of these more recognizable symbols and images, he stressed, are left to the viewer's imagination. I think this idea of projecting strong and vibrant colors with a lot of energy has been essential to my work through the years," Newsum said. "That's the point for me, really, creating these thought-provoking environments of color that invoke a range of emotions. Culturemap

Selected solo exhibits

Newsum's solo shows include the following:

• 2009, Compositions, Marks and Arrangements, HGC Gallery, Dallas, Texas
• 2008, Primary Concerns, Joan Wich Gallery, Houston, Texas
• 2007, Evolution, College of the Mainland, Texas City, Texas
• 2002, One Person Exhibition, The University of Memphis Art Museum, Memphis, Tennessee
• 2000, One Man Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings, O’Kane Gallery, University of Houston-Downtown, Houston, Texas
• 1998, One Man Exhibition, Winston-Salem University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
• 1990,
• 1989, Floyd Newsum, Barnes-Blackman Gallery, Houston, Texas

Public art projects

Newsum's public art projects include two Houston Metro Light Rail Station art designs and seven sculptures for the Main Street Square Station on Main Street (Houston, Texas) between Dallas and McKinney. In addition, there are four paintings in the Commerce Building of UHD, a suspended sculpture for the lobby of the Acres Home Multi-Service Center, Houston, Texas and five suspended sculptures for the lobby of the Hazel Harvey Peace Building, Fort Worth, Texas.

• 2009, Better Living (five hanging sculptures), Hazel Harvey Peace Building, Fort Worth, Texas
• 2005, Ladder of Hope (painted stainless steel sculpture in entrance lobby), Acres Home Multi-Service Center, Houston, Texas
• 2004, Contemplating Success (four paintings for the lobbies of four floors), University of Houston-Downtown, Commerce Building
• 2003, Planter and Stems (seven painted stainless steel sculptures), City of Houston, Main Street Square, Main Street between Dallas and McKinney,
• 2002, Houston Metro Light Rail Stations, Main at McGowen and Main at Berry Stations (CV)

References

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Performance

The Art Guys, also spelled Art Guise, Art Gize, Aaart Guyz or Artt Gize, among others, are best known for their performance art.At work with

Still, they are best known for their performance art -- or, in many instances, endurance art. At work with It is possible, of course, that the Art Guys are more con artists than artists. Texas Monthly magazine rather huffily dismissed them several years ago as "shameless promoters of themselves and their creations, which makes them the Home Shopping Network of the Texas art world." AT work with

But the Art Guys defend their work: It's accessible. It's democratic. "There's been some sort of breakdown between the artist and society," said Mr. Galbreth, a tall, lanky man with a shock of dark hair. He met Mr. Massing in 1982 while they were studying with the sculptor James Surls at the University of Houston. The Art Guys say their mission is not to send messages or make statements, but to ask questions. "Our work is not didactic," Mr. Galbreth said. "We're in the world with everybody else and we put ourselves in absurd situations, and they open up intellectual doors. And once you really start investigating the issue of absurdity, that gets very complex."At workwith

Suits: Clothes Make the Man

In 1997, Massing and Galbreth began a new project by soliciting advertisers to lease space on specially-tailored business suits designed by Todd Oldham. The garments featured more than 50 spaces for advertising logos, which cost the purchasers from $2,000 to $7,000 apiece. When The Art Guys debuted the suits in 1998, they were plastered with patches from Budweiser, Altoids, Target, Krispy Kreme and a host of others. And yes, the parade will consist solely of Massing and Galbreth, who will wear the suits at various gallery openings and public appearances throughout the next year.

documentary and book

The Art Guys Marry a Plant

In their most controversial work, the conceptual art duo donned tuxedos and walked down the aisle together pulling a wagon loaded with a potted live oak sapling. The "marriage ceremony" in the Museum of Fine Arts Houston's sculpture garden took place on June 13, 2009, nearly a year to the day after California’s Proposition 8, seeking to outlaw gay marriage, qualified for the state ballot. At the time gay marriage was already illegal in Texas. As they approached the minister in front of gathered family, friends and local art lovers. Readings were recited, vows were spoken, and the guys slipped a brass shower curtain ring onto one of the naked branches of the little oak.

The saga of "The Art Guys Marry a Plant" is something of a cross between Marcel Duchamp and TMZ, in which the context for an artwork’s meaning suddenly becomes a voyeuristic train wreck of loudmouth personalities caught on tape. The whole ordeal was kick-started by a simple accusation from an art critic Douglas Britt : "The Art Guys Marry a Plant" was anti-gay marriage. it also inadvertently reinforces the ‘slippery slope’ argument that if we let gays wed, next we’ll allow people to marry animals, and so on.”

The Art Guys claim the performance constituted a “real” wedding and that it was an effort to make a statement about abstract notions of cosmic and biological universalism. “When two people pledge to care for a plant in marriage, they create a unique bond which binds them closer than any spoken or written words,” the minister said at the wedding, sounding more like a stodgy Lorax than a homophobic bigot. But as Britt, who is a gay man, pointed out, what was missing from the Art Guys’ marriage equation – legality – is the precise point of conflict in the gay marriage debate. Did the wedding’s legal fakeness construe a mockery of the struggle to obtain those rights for gay couples, or was the Art Guys' piece making a mockery of the legal institution of marriage itself, asserting their freedom to love whomever or whatever they please by wedding a plant? Or, was the piece simply about what the curator who commissioned the piece, the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston’s Toby Kamps, said it was about: notions of “posterity” and “nature persisting while we perish.”

In June 2011, the Menil Collection, with Kamps as its new curator, acquired the tree, and the critical dialogue quickly spun out of control. After the Menil announced it would plant the tree on its grounds (just yards from the Rothko Chapel, which, during the 1980s, was the site of many memorial services for many people who had died of AIDS-related illnesses), the critic Britt decided he would stage his own counter-performance art piece. He sent out a request looking for female art critics who would be willing to participate in an artwork he called "The Art Gay Marries a Woman." Everyone rejected his proposal. But Britt finally found a willing accomplice, Reese Darby, a local art publicist. On Nov. 16, 2011, before the amateur strip contest at the bar Tony’s Corner Pocket, Douglas Britt married Reese Darby, sealing the vows with an exchange of ring pops. He became Devon Britt-Darby, and six months later they were divorced pro-bono by Reese’s father, a civil rights attorney.

After the Menil acquired the piece, a quieter, backroom campaign was launched against the artwork by a handful of powerful Houston art world brokers. Then the vandalism began. In December 2011, the tree in the Menil’s garden was snapped in half. Rumors pointed to Britt or another opponent of the piece, Houston gallery owner Hiram Butler. The morning of the attack, the Art Guys had an altercation with Butler outside his gallery, and according to the police report. The most likely perpetrator of the art vandalism was Douglas Britt. The newly married gay man had posted videos on YouTube showing him messing with the tree, slipping his wedding ring pop onto a branch for a photo shoot and sprinkling a mix of his and Houston-based conceptual artist Dario Robleto’s hair on the ground around the oak. But Britt-Darby was out of town during the incident.

He had recently posted a bizarre YouTube confessional in which he explained that now that he was married he needed to take a leave of absence from his job as the Houston Chronicle’s art critic in order to re-create a crystal-meth-infused road trip he took in his youth. He would return to prostitution, he announced, and Britt launched a website that archived his writings about "The Art Guys Marry a Plant," advertised his escort prices, documented his philosophy of casual sex, and featured heaps of photos and videos of the chiseled shirtless critic flexing, taking punches to the stomach, or ranting about the Art Guys’ tree. After the video was posted, the Houston Chronicle granted Britt-Darby a permanent leave of absence.

There were additional acts of vandalism and board members continued to feel pressure from some members of Houston’s LGBT community who wanted the tree removed. By the time the museum issued a statement explaining that, concerned about vandalism, they were returning the tree to the Art Guys, "The Art Guys Marry a Plant" had taken on a new life outside of the context of its initial performance and the intentions of the artists. It had become a kind of symbolic touchstone of a broader debate about gay marriage and an art museum’s complicity in what was, depending on where you stood on the piece, the preservation of free expression or complicity in hateful bigotry. I

Maybe the Art Guys were asking for it. After all, much of their previous work – like swimming in and drinking water from the murky Buffalo Bayou in 2002 to commemorate the Clean Water Act of 1973 or attempting to pre-auction their own cremated ashes – is about attempting to push the boundaries of the definition of art while poking at institutional or bureaucratic inanities. Still, by the time the Menil decided to rid itself of the controversy (although the museum insists the piece is still technically in its collection), what "The Art Guys Marry a Plant" did and didn’t mean was hardly the point. One meaning had eroded another, the performances and the protests that surrounded the original piece had become subsumed into the art’s own symbolic meaning.

“The Menil seeks to engage in a vigorous conversation about contemporary works of art and their subjects,” the museum said in its statement about removal of the tree, yet the silence now from all the parties involved – the artists, the museum and the critics who all refuse to speak about "The Art Guys Marry a Plant" – suggests that vigorous conversation about some subjects must either be pointed, clear and digestible or it is just too hot to touch.

As for the Art Guys, they told the Houston Chronicle they want to return to how they operated at the beginning of their careers, “doing things out in public, away from the paradigms of galleries and museums.” It’s hard to blame them for wanting that. Peter Simek SALON.COM

Sculpture

Not Artists

"The art guys are not artists" is "a statement of where we are now in our heads," Galbreth said, explaining the philosophical argument called the liar paradox that thinkers have batted around since Aristotle's time. "We selected that just to be funny. That's the work. So we can and can't be artists if we choose to. And to make it more complicated, we put it out on April Fool's." FInal Word Molly Glentzer 2016

Permanent Public Art Works

• 2010-“The Statue of Four Lies”, University of Houston, Houston, Texas
• 2005-“American Freeze [or] Everybody Frieze”, Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, Phoenix, Arizona
• 2004-“Travel Light”, Terminal E, George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Houston, Texas
• 2003-“Video Ring”, George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Houston, Texas
• 2003-“Mighty Tidy”, painted trash skimmer boat commissioned by Buffalo Bayou Partnership of Houston, Houston, Texas

Publications

From CV

Articles, reviews and stories about their work have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Art In America, ArtNews, Artforum, Sculpture Magazine, CNN, CBS News Sunday Morning and many more. The Art Guys have been included in many books and catalogs including The Art Guys: Think Twice and SUITS: The Clothes Make the Man, published by Harry N. Abrams, New York; and the DVD The Art Guys: Home On The Range, a compilation of 25 years of video works published by Microcinema International.

References

CALVIN, TX (BASTROP COUNTY)

John J. Buder CALVIN, TEXAS (Bastrop County). Calvin is between State Highway 95 and Big Sandy Creek five miles north of Bastrop in north central Bastrop County. The town, named after Calvin Silliman, son of Calvin Coal Company founder W. C. Silliman, was established in 1910 on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad as a planned community to house the local population of predominantly Mexican coal miners. Calvin, like its trackside neighbors to the south, Glenham and Phelan, owed its existence to the lignite industry that began to flourish after 1900 between Sayersville and Bastrop. By 1912 Calvin had a post office run by postmaster Newell L. Trammell, and during the productive 1920s some 100 residents occupied fifty-three neatly arranged buildings there. The miners' children attended school in Bastrop. During the Great Depression the production of shaft-mined lignite waned, however, relative to increasingly competitive petroleum and more efficient strip-mined coal. Postal service to Calvin was discontinued in the late 1930s, and by 1940 the community had diminished to one store and an agricultural population of about fifty. Mining in Bastrop struggled on into the early 1940s before being abandoned. Calvin, uninhabited after 1950, has been completely razed by the owner of the site, and today little remains to identify the former community. tsha

References

'Letter to the World is one of choreographer Martha Graham's best known modern dance works. It premiered on August 11, 1940, at the Bennington College Theater in Bennington, Vermont. Performed to music by Hunter Johnson, the piece is based on the life of 19th century poet Emily Dickinson. Edythe Gilfond designed the costumes; Arch Lauterer created the set. The original cast members were Graham, Margaret Meredith, Erick Hawkins, Jane Dudley and members of Graham's Group.

Theme

The ballet derives its title from an epigram by the reclusive American poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). The short piece introduces a longer poem called Part One: Life and reads as follows:

This is my letter to the world,

That never wrote to me,

The simple news that Nature told,

With tender majesty.

Her message is committed

To hands I cannot see;

For love of her, sweet countrymen,

Judge tenderly of me!

Structure

Graham's Letter to the World presents a multifaceted study of the poetry and person of Emily Dickinson. The two main characters, The One Who Dances and The One Who Speaks, represent the predominant dual aspects of her personality. The other roles, The Ancestress, The Lover, and March embody additional sides of the author's psyche.

Unrestrained and passionate, The One Who Dances, a role Graham created for herself, is the most technically challenging role. The One Who Speaks, her calmer alter ego and symbol for Dickinson's inner life, recites snippets of her poetry and portions of her letters. The Ancestress stands for Dickinson's Puritan ancestry and for death. The Lover represents her love of life, as well as an actual love interest. The role of March shows Dickinson's childlike and guileless side. Rosella Simonari, Looking Back at Martha Graham’s Letter to the World: Its Genesis, Its Reception, Its Legacy As with many of Graham's works, the ballet's climax depicts the artist's creative impulse and her struggle with convention.

Reception

Irving Kolodin, writing for the New York Sun (January 21, 1941) noted, "Miss Graham has evolved what might be reasonable described as the first authentically American Ballet." Critic Edwin Denby, writing in Modern Music (March-April 1941) declared, "Much of it is not clear to me after seeing it once. But it contains such astonishing passages one is quite willing to forgive the awkward parts it also has, and remember it is a masterpiece."loc

first performance with orchestra

John Martin

Walter Terry

Authentically American

Martha Graham Repeats "Letter to the World" http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200153468/default.html

1946 review http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200153648/enlarge.html?page=1&size=1024&from=pageturner

Not so good one http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200153658/pageturner.html

Terry 46 good http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200153590/pageturner.html

1946 Lloyd masterwork http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200153334/pageturner.html

stopped here http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/search?query=subject:%22Letter%20to%20the%20World%22&start=36&view=thumbnail&label=

Siegel

Freedman

Graham

Franko

Revival

http://bam150years.blogspot.com/2011/11/martha-grahams-last-dance.html

Legacy

Many Graham authorities, including Marcia B. Siegel, consider Letter to the World a choreographic masterwork.

Barbara Morgan http://www.mocp.org/detail.php?t=objects&type=browse&f=maker&s=Morgan%2C+Barbara&record=28

Andy Warhol https://www.artnet.com/auctions/artists/andy-warhol/martha-graham-letter-to-the-world-the-kick