3 posts tagged “art”
In honor of World Teachers' Day today, tell us about a teacher who had a positive impact on your life.
John Abram Bubb, d. 1993, sculptor in stone, dearly remembered: the coolest art teacher who ever was.
Sister Patricia Binko, the Nun of Suzuki Strings. I play the violin because of her.
Bruce Weigl, poet, critic, essayist, memoirist, translator, and fucking cool guy. I had his English 213, Intro to Poetry Writing, pretty much by accident -- it fit my schedule that fall. I thought, "Oh, poetry. That should be easy" -- words which haunted me as I sat down to write my 4-hour master's-degree candidacy exam in 1997.
Carolyn Forche. My guru. I love Carolyn forever.
Peter Klappert. Peter is another poet under whose grad-school strictures I blossomed.
Chris Thaiss was the first instructor to teach me how to teach, way back in the TA days. Now, everybody I work with teaches me more about all that.
A little earlier today, Doug was watching a cooking show with great interest, on which a Chinese gentleman -- Martin Yu? I want to say -- was making a Macanese dish with okra, tomatoes, onions, and dried shrimp as the major ingredients. The chef explained that tomatoes are called, in Chinese, "berries from the West." I don't know whether he was speaking Mandarin or Cantonese, but he pronounced the word (approximately, with a rising tone on the first syllable and a low tone on the second) "FUN-keh."
Well! This makes me see tomatoes in a completely new light. Song lyrics like "We got the tomatoes / Gotta have the tomatoes" by Tomatodelic, for instance, as they and sister band Parliament chronicle the eternal battle between Dr. Tomatostein and Sir Nose D'VoidoTomatoes. Or consider: "Make my tomatoes the P-Tomatoes / I wants to get tomatoed up."
The Demuth Museum just hung its silver-anniversary exhibit, and I'm having a tug of war between really wanting to go Now Now Now, and still having this stupid virus. I mean, it's not like they're taking the exhibit away on Monday. It's just that I have a reason for wanting to immerse myself in Demuth as quickly as possible... all will become clear by Monday. Really.
