Prayers For Athiests - Psalm for St. Paul Offical Video

Rhode Island based Prayers For Atheists have been getting major props over the last few years for their high-energy, smart, political punk rock. The group started as a collaboration between spoken word poet Jared Paul and musician Alan Hague. Jared's rhythmic poetry caught Alan's attention at a show and the two began to figure out how their styles could work together. The result is Prayers For Atheists, the band, and the EP that is out now on Sage Francis' Strange Famous Records.

Musically the EP is a mix of punk styles that stays hardcore while being extremely danceable and fun. Lyrically Jared explores relevant issues of our day with a critical edge, and a penchant for resistance.

Psalm for St. Paul is a personal account of his true life experience being harassed and arrested by police during a non-violent protest at the 2008 Republican National Convention, and the grassroots campaign to battle the charges in court that followed.

The official video, released today, combines actual footage from that protest with clips of the bands live show and Jared singing his story to the camera. It builds into a dynamic and powerful statement and document of the very real struggle of free people in the police state.

check out the album at Strange Famous Records

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"Chapter 134: destination manifestation" - an installation by Leah Violet

This coming First Friday, August 6th, 2010, Denada Gallery will open the door to Leah Violet's imaginative world of personal narrative. Inside this room, guests will find themselves embedded in a tapestry made of the objects and artworks that have collected in her world over the past 2 years.

Chapter 134: destination manifestation is a cumulative response to the cross-country trek that landed her and a backpack, in Portland during early 2008, and the discovery process that followed. The story extends over two years spent living in a SE house known as 134. It begins with graphite drawings and progresses through a multitude of media including paint, handmade paper, textile, photo-transfer and found-object sculpture. Her work infuses post-consumer, recycled folk aesthetics with high-art sensibility to create deeply personal reflections of the physical and spiritual space she inhabits daily. The result is a quilt of coded metaphor in psychedelic tones that sound like the echo of Frida Kahlo heard by visionaries of a future time.

As a complete work, Chapter 134 displays Leah Violet's story of self-actualization with everyday objects and images through the kaleidoscope of hind-sight. Nurtured within her home space, each piece in the room resonates with her energy and vibrates with the ordered chaos of an exploratory life. She shares it now, as she vacates that home for a new journey that has what remains of her belongings filling a veggie-oil school bus. That is the next chapter. For now we have the pleasure of reading this installment to discover our own meaning between her prismatic lines.

More information on the work of Leah Violet and some images of the pieces in progress are available at her blog: http://thisisgettingup.blogspot.com

Chapter 134: destination manifestation
Installation by Leah Violet
Opening First Friday, August 6, 2010
Denada Gallery
1212 SE Division
6-9pm

New Music Review - Saudade - Lookouts' Journal LP

I wrote this review for Oregon Music News, which is where it originally appeared.



Saudade is an untranslatable Portuguese word for an irreconcilable longing.

Saudade is also the musical conversation between Jason Gray and Chris Cantino, two artists who met working in a residential psychiatric treatment facility.

They come from different musical backgrounds, and opposite sides of the country, but working together they found a common voice in tonal dialogue. They have been playing shows in Portland since 2007, and their 2008 downloadable LP The Hooded Ones (also released on the cassette-only label Peasant Magik) was well received and made a few top-ten lists in the noise/ambient blog world.

Their newest effort, Lookouts’ Journal, is available this week from Arena Rock Recording Co.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

Nanoism - fiction phrased for your phone.

Nanoism is a Twitter-based lit zine (no, really) that publishes fiction of 140 characters or less. As in, the length of a Twitter post. They publish 3 stories a week, and also pay for accepted submissions. Thats not all. They also publish good stories- as good as it can get in that breadth of space. In December they are going to publish a series of serials, each five posts in length, and they are running a contest to find the best stories to publish. The best part about this idea is that they not only have to make sense as a serialized whole, but also must stand alone as individual stories. The theme is the story of life, which I look forward to seeing ripped open across the board.

Apparently there are a growing number of very short story (#vss in the search box) publishers on Twitter and if you like reading quick hits of good words, its worth looking into. It seems like the idea is that you can subscribe to these zines via your mobile device, and get txts of poetry or fiction to brighten your day. Nanoism editor Ben White is blogging about these zines as he finds them at BenWhite.Com. Overall I think this literary arena is worth checking out, because if nothing else, its a quick read.

Visit Nanoism.net

and follow Nanosim on Twitter

Low-Income Housing made from Recycled Materials - Dan Phillips is Doing It Right

Apparently Dan Phillips has been doing this for a while, but I just recently heard about it. He and his wife run a project called Phoenix Commotion, outside of Houston, Texas, that builds homes for low-income families almost entirely out of recycled materials. This project was recognized as the "most innovative housing worldwide" in 2003 by the International Institute of Social Inventions. Its not like you sign up and they build you a house though, instead they set people up with a skilled builder and actually train the new residents in home-building skills. They call it a "homesteading initiative" with the intent to give people homes and skills that they otherwise would not be able to acquire. This seems to impact social problems on so many levels that it is amazing its not being repeated elsewhere (maybe it is, but I have yet to find it). They work with large plots of land that they can break into smaller segments and can create single family homes for about twenty to fifty thousand dollars. In this way they are creating new sustainable neighborhoods that will carry the positive intentions through their lifespan. I would like to see this take the place of suburban expansion, which it just may as the greater American consciousness begins to realize we can no longer live out that lie. Its an added benefit that these homes all look unique and completely rad - these are the types of places you used to draw as a kid, the dream home with cool windows, weird doors and spiral stairs. Imagine if instead of a large tract of cookie-cutter boxes we saw our neighborhoods develop as personal expressions of the people living there. Throw in a small town center with a community building, co-op and a local farm and we are talking about awesome, unique villages that provide a positive space for sustainable life. This guy is already doing it, laying the blueprint for the generation to come.

Learn more at PhoenixCommotion.com

Labor in Love

*note: This article was originally published in the program for the Five Town Massive Art Festival in January 2006.*

If you watch what other people are doing during study hall, you will find a few types: those who actually study, those who whittle at the clock with games that fall beneath the radar of authority, and those who choose to use the time for interests not well fed during the average school day. When I first met Nissa Kauppila, she sat down across from me, and pulled out a sketchbook.

In the years since then I found that she was a great artist, whose talent is only overshadowed by her work ethic. If she sets a goal for herself, be it with painting, filmmaking, or just meeting someone for a cup of coffee, she will do everything in her power to make that happen. This quality is what set her work apart from others in high school; the details spoke of someone who has spent hours making choices of color, line or texture. The early paintings I can recall were images that spoke of a young woman exploring and crafting her response to the world. She worked with stylized imagery that seemed to grow and move beyond the frame as evidence of the fluid process of creation Nissa chose to take part in.

It is her trust and effort in this process that has brought her thus far. Nissa graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2005, and though she went in a visual artist with a strong background in painting, she emerged a filmmaker. While attending college she found work to support herself on the lobster boats that have long been a part of that community's economy. Nissa's film work has been personal, often finding some aspect of her own experience to share with the community. There is an essence of social responsibility in her work, she is aware that moving pictures have an effect on the minds of the viewers. Her films are a celebration of free speech that tell her story with the trust that in sharing our stories, we may better understand the world we co-inhabit.

Nissa's most recent film work, "I Live Here, but I Stay in Vermont", is her documentation of a specific time in her life, and the process that led her there. Like her paintings, the images in this film often move beyond their frame. They tell of the greater reality that brings them to life. This is the story of a young woman who has learned the value of life by making the choice to follow her aspirations despite whatever may block the path, as told through her family's shared experience of growth. It is her decision to live a life she can love, and her effort to follow through on this, that brings such personal work to connect with a public audience.

Dialogue of Truth

*note: This article was originally published in the Program for the Five Town Massive Arts Festival in Bristol Vermont in January 2006. Anais has since put out a number of projects including the critically acclaimed album "The Brightness" on Righteous Babe Records. You can learn and listen at AnaisMitchell.com*

I first saw Anais Mitchell perform during a coffee shop night at Deerleap Books in Bristol, Vermont, during the spring of 1999. I remember a song that tied an examination of the cultural influences that make up the young American man with a story about people exploring each other beyond those influences. I have a distinct memory of listening to her voice as it explored what would become a signature style, giving each word the weight to stay with the audience long enough to influence conversations well beyond the night of the performance.

A year later she played at a Boston coffee shop that has since closed down. With her guitar, voice, and a suitcase amplifier, she brought people out of their conversations and into a group audience. This same effect would happen in the subway stations a few blocks away, and at the club in Cambridge where she would become a regular in the scene. In the years that followed she would play for many more audiences, no longer in subways, but on the bill at festivals, local bars and coffee shops, from her time in Austin, Texas, to the Kerrvile Folk Festival where she was awarded the prestigious New Folk Award in 2003, to touring with the "Circus Guy's Rock and Roll Revue" throughout the Middle East.

Anais' most recent album, "Hymns for the Exiled", recorded with Michael Chorney at the Gristmill in Bristol, Vermont, is graceful, buoyant, concentrated and honest. Her voice resides in the space it once explored, as though it is now building upon a solid foundation. Her subject matter is focused, delightfully poetic and straightforward.

I had the opportunity to see her play in 2005 at the Northeast Kingdom Music Festival. She stood on stage, with her guitar, in front of friends and strangers, and played with the confidence of one who holds her strength and challenges her weakness. Her energetic presence is a hundred times the size of her figure, and the rapt attention of her audience at the first ripple of her voice is a tribute to this. through the meandering notes, the smiles, direct eyes and soulful dance with her guitar, Anais Mitchell delivers an honest experience that asks us to find the same truth in ourselves.