Sculptor Sabin Howard and Architect Joe Weishaar win WW1 Memorial Commission
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Sculptor Sabin Howard and Architect Joe Weishaar win WW1 Memorial Commission

I am overjoyed to announce that my husband classical figurative sculptor Sabin Howard and his partner architect Joe Weishaar won the WW1 Memorial Commission.

There will be more on the World War 1 Memorial Commission website.

Vice Chair Edwin Fountain spoke beautifully about the team and their design and a few minutes was captured on Periscope. Watch for yourself!

I am the first to acknowledge Joe Weishaar’s unusual brilliance. His design conception has an extraordinarily graceful simplicity and elegance that bespeak his genius. However, I am Sabin Howard‘s wife, and I am incredibly proud of him. Here’s a quote from the Chicago Tribune:

Officials of the U.S. World War One Centennial Commission, which approved his team’s design on an 8-1 vote, said Weishaar’s decision to include on his team Sabin Howard, an experienced classical sculptor from New York City, was pivotal to the win. The commission voted after an independent jury of seven experts earlier this month unanimously picked the team’s design.

The story was picked up by news organizations around the country, indeed, around the globe. Articles appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, and Curbed. The Twitterverse was alive with the news. By the way, if you’re on Twitter, Follow @SabinHoward and @WW1CC The WW1 Centennial Commission!

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Sabin Howard presenting to the WW1 Memorial Committee
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Sabin Howard presenting to the WW1 Memorial Committee

A Youtube video of Sabin Howard presenting to the WW1 Memorial Committee.

I’m so proud of my husband and his partner, architect Joe Weishaar, for their proposal to the WW1 Memorial Committee. Sabin and Joe put together a beautiful proposal for a memorial to the Great War in Pershing Park in Washington DC. Joe Weishaar did the wonderful design and Sabin created the sculpture, the beautiful reliefs and sculpture in the round. Their proposal is called WEIGHT OF REMEMBRANCE.

Some enterprising member of the audience streamed about 8 minutes of Sabin’s speech on Periscope. I was able to get the video from Periscope and upload it into Youtube.

Sabin said, in part, “”Ambition in balance, coupled with humbleness is an open heart. This is where energy flows. This is where we create as human beings.”

Sabin Howard WW1 Memorial

My Personal Statement on Frank Gehry & the Eisenhower Memorial
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My Personal Statement on Frank Gehry & the Eisenhower Memorial

What follows is my personal opinion about Frank Gehry and the Eisenhower Memorial based on my family’s experience with him.

Statement about Frank Gehry

I am the wife of classical figurative sculptor Sabin Howard, who was courted by Frank Gehry to be the sculptor for the Eisenhower memorial, asked to write a proposal and give ideas, flown to LA for a lengthy meeting with Gehry and his team, promised the gig to the tune of a verbal statement: “You are the sculptor for the Eisenhower Memorial and you will start next week,” and then suddenly dropped.

Sabin says outright, “He stole my ideas for creating a relief that places general Eisenhower as part of his troops and at the same time at the head of his troops. He hired a less competent sculptor who does not have the ability to pull it off.”

This kind of dishonorable behavior and intellectual theft on Gehry’s part convinced me that Frank Gehry is not to be trusted. I began to pay attention to the Gehry camp’s arrogant shenanigans around the Eisenhower Memorial, starting with his blatantly rude and condescending disregard for the Eisenhower family’s staunch opposition to his plans.

Gehry’s ill conceived plans call for gargantuan woven metal curtains and a tiny sculpture of the boy Ike. The curtains are ugly and reference only an elderly architect’s egotistical notion of himself as a groovy post modernist—they have nothing whatsoever to do with our beloved and plainspoken president, statesman, and military general.

It’s not just the way Gehry treats the Eisenhower family that’s scandalous. The cost of these hideous metal curtains is astronomical, more than a hundred million dollars. Those curtains aren’t in production and yet, to date, more than forty million dollars have disappeared into Gehry’s pockets, with only spin doctoring to show for it. Gehry has hired a team of full-time publicists to keep the machinery of his self-aggrandizing monument going.

I have written in the Huffington Post about the disappearance of this taxpayer money. Forty million dollars is a lot of cash! I have queried high profile media venues, trying to garner interest in some real journalism, some real investigative reporting.

In this I was aided and directed by my neighbor, the venerated and sadly recently deceased international bestselling author Frederic Morton. He personally spoke to people at the New York Times and the NBC investigative unit. Fred was an Austrian Jew who wrote poignantly of his father’s internment at Dachau. He had met and dined with Eisenhower and Mamie; he held a deep respect for President Eisenhower and felt distressed that the Eisenhower family was being disregarded and condescended to, he agreed with me that Gehry’s plans were inappropriate, and he felt that the vanished tens of millions of taxpayer dollars was an outrageous scandal that warranted serious investigation.

Despite Fred’s stature, these news outlets failed to respond.

I can only surmise that these news outlets are as smitten with Gehry’s celebrity as were the cronies who handed him the Eisenhower memorial in the first place despite the fact that Gehry is patently the wrong man for the job.

I do intensive historical research for my historical novels. I published one novel set during WW2 and I am still researching that period for another novel. The more research I do, the more certain I am that Eisenhower the statesman and president of simple dignity would have been horrified by the gargantuan metal drapery. Absolutely horrified. His family has spoken up in his memory and in his honor and they deserve to be heard.

In continuing to press his plans, Frank Gehry is thrusting up his middle finger not just at the American people, but at President Eisenhower as well. I would say, “the very man whom the Eisenhower Memorial is supposed to honor,” but it is clear that Gehry’s plans honor only Gehry and no one else. They certainly do not honor President Dwight Eisenhower.

I have been told that Tom Brokaw and Bob Dole have been sucked into the slick chicanery of Gehry’s PR efforts. If so, then I say to Brokaw and Dole, Shame on you!

Pushing to get money for Gehry’s hideous plans would only be throwing good money after bad money, and that’s the sign of rank foolishness. Gehry’s advanced age is the only reason to rush ahead with widely-loathed plans despite obvious chicanery, massive quantities of vanished tax-payer money, and the Eisenhower family’s objections.

Some politicians and TV personalities who are also elderly like to pontificate that it’s time to get the monument done after the 15 years of wrangling over it. To them I say: after an open competition, it only took a few years to get Maya Lin’s breathtakingly gorgeous Memorial Wall done.

And Lin’s Memorial demonstrates the better way to move ahead: a fair and open competition, as is currently being done with the World War 1 memorial.

So to those aging cronies and TV personalities who are smitten by Gehry’s celebrity, I say, Don’t throw good money after bad. It’s time to cut bait and move on. Hold a fair, open, and blind competition. That’s what would truly honor Eisenhower, a man of famed and celebrated humility.

To anyone who is listening, I say: don’t buy into Gehry’s shenanigans. President Eisenhower, his remaining family, and We the American People deserve better. We deserve to know about how our money is lining Gehry’s pockets. And we deserve a truly beautiful and magnificent Eisenhower Memorial, something on the order of the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial wall.

HEAR THE BLOGTALKRADIO SHOW ABOUT THE GEHRY MEMORIAL.

DR. BRUCE COLE’S ARTICLE “GEHRY’S MIDDLE FINGER

DR. BRUCE COLE’S ARTICLE “A MONUMENTAL SHAME

NATIONAL REVIEW “CONGRESS NEEDS TO KILL FRANK GEHRY’S AWFUL EISENHOWER MEMORIAL ONCE AND FOR ALL

Traci L. Slatton about the Gehry Memorial on the Huffington Post

Ongoing Chicanery With the Gehry Memorial

The Problem With the Gehry Memorial

Check Out Art Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Independent Artists and Thinkers on BlogTalkRadio

 

Eisenhower Memorial

Terminator Genisys: A Review
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Terminator Genisys: A Review

Go see this movie, it’s GREAT!

Now that my loyalty has been assuaged, let me discuss the movie more thoughtfully.

This latest addition to the franchise pays loving homage to the first Terminator. For people like me who are fans of the first Terminator, that’s a beatific thing. There were moments…lines…scenes…that made me cheer, because they precisely evoked the first Terminator.

The first Terminator is a perfect movie. Artistically speaking, it was extremely well done. I’m talking as a writer now, as a professional storyteller. The first movie has no loose ends, no extraneous moments, no extra dialogue, no unnecessary anything, no flab whatsoever. The entire movie argues to the specific value that machines can never be human.

What’s the name of the bar where Kyle Reese first reveals himself to Sarah Connor, when he saves her? Tech Noir. What’s on the answering machine for Sarah and her roommate? “Machines need love too….” Nope, they don’t. That’s the point. Machines don’t need love…they never feel remorse or pity. Machines are not human.

Machines will destroy humanity.

The original casting of Arnold Shwartzenegger as the Terminator was brilliant. As a young dude, he was so buffed up on lifting and steroids that he didn’t look human. He looked like a machine–like living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

In Terminator Genisys, Arnold looks…old but not obsolete. Never obsolete. No, never. I don’t care how many children he sires out of wedlock. As the Terminator, he can be gray, but he will always be relevant.

This movie was fun, and it had appropriate slow moments, too. What I mean is that, in order to be satisfying, movies need to flow between heightened intensity and lowered intensity. What I see lately–even in Mad Max Fury Road, which I enjoyed, [HELLO: CHARLIZE THERON, YOU ARE MY QUEEN!!!] is that too many movies are one long chase with explosions, boobs, and cars. Not good.

You get that kind of crap when you have too many suits involved in the process. Those people should not give a creative opinion. They should keep their traps shut and count beans. They should not try to weigh in on art–because when they do, they destroy art.

Terminator Genisys had moments of reflection and pause to balance and heighten the moments of wild over-the-top intensity. Someone exercised a little bit of control over those stupid suits.

My husband didn’t love the movie as I did. He’s not a fan of the first Terminator, that perfect movie. He asked me, “Why do you like those kinds of after-the-world-ends movies?”

Fair question.

Since I was a kid, I’ve looked around and noticed the insanity and evil in the world at large. Genocide. Monsanto. Bio-engineered fruits and vegetables that look good but taste like crap. Terminator genes. The unrepentant, unbridled financial ambition of large, multinational corporations that function as sovereign nation states without oversight or accountability.

The apocalypse is coming and it will be unleashed by one of these companies.

Am I really the one person who sees Google in Genisys? The head of Google says they come up to the line of being creepy but don’t cross over. I disagree. It is my personal opinion that Google crosses right over. Data mining is the latest iteration of EVIL. Big Brother is watching: Brought to you by Google.

I think Google is Genisys is Skynet.

So I am attracted to these themes because I see them being played out in front of our eyes.

Few people care. As long as they have the latest iPhone, Netflix, Spotify, and access to marijuana, they don’t question what is really going on.

A stoner is a subject, not a citizen.

The suits are winning. In the real world and in the making of movies.

Go see Terminator Genisys. And think about it.

Terminator Genisys

The Never Ending Journey of the Independent Artist, My Latest on the HuffPo
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The Never Ending Journey of the Independent Artist, My Latest on the HuffPo

I am an independent artist, married to an independent artist, with friends who are, yes, independent artists. This piece on the Huffington Post reflects what I’ve learned.

In part, the article says:

What I experienced was that the big traditional publishing companies had gotten mired in the quicksand of conventional thinking and groupthink. They had forgotten the importance of nurturing a midlist author through a few books to build a readership. They overlooked the appeal of richness and diversity in a book list and so refused to invest in truly original, unorthodox projects.

Worst of all, they had taken the selection of books away from people who love books—editors—and turned it over to people desperately searching for a business school algorithm to make every book a bestseller out of the starting gate—the marketing department.

Not that some wonderful books don’t sneak past the eyes of the marketing department. But, increasingly, legacy publishers emulate corporate Hollywood studios: turning out branded, franchise entertainment, mindless drivel that appeals to the horny, nerdy teenager in us all.

The great books and movies that make it past gatekeepers usually do so because they are spearheaded by someone passionate about the project. These projects come from the creative heart and soul of a dedicated individual. They require perseverance and vision in order to unfold in the world.

With no luck but bad luck with the legacy publishers, I embarked on my own passion process. I founded Parvati Press. I started independently publishing my own books and recently other authors.

 I’m fortunate to have two strong-minded individualists in my life as models for my journey: my husband Sabin Howard, and my friend dancer Lori Belilove, Founder and Artistic Director of the Isadora Duncan Dance Company and Foundation.

Catch the whole article here on the HuffPo.

Though I did realize this morning that there is one thing I forgot to mention explicitly in the post: the pleasure inherent in this path. It’s just fun to think ‘outside the box’ and to operate outside the confines of corporate mentality. It’s scary, yes, because it’s insecure. But it is ever so delicious.

 

independent artist

huffington-post

Independent Artists & Thinkers, a BlogtalkRadio show
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Independent Artists & Thinkers, a BlogtalkRadio show

I’m launching a BlogTalkRadio show. I’ve created the “Independent Artists & Thinkers” show and our first show airs Thursday, April 16 at 1 pm EDT. I’ll be interviewing dancer and Artistic Director Lori Belilove, founder of the Isadora Duncan Company and Foundation.

This internet radio show is focused on one of my personal passions: the journey of the independent artist, who creates and sustains art outside the structure of the big studios, publishing companies, and galleries.

It’s my belief that the most interesting, creative, and original voices today are heard outside of the big corporations, studios, and galleries. Individuals of courage and inspiration are seizing the opportunities to create and promote their art themselves. I intend to support them and to bring their stories to you–to the world.

On this premiere show, I’ll interview independent artists of all kinds, unusual thinkers, and healers about their process. How do they do it? How do they start with an idea and bring it to life in the world? This show intends to illuminate the journey. Feel free to call in to 516 453 6052 with questions, or livechat with me at blogtalkradio.com/independentartiststhinkers

On this first episode, we’ll ask: What does it take to found and sustain an artistic institution? Lori Belilove has some ideas to share with us.

Lori Belilove is recognized around the world as the premier interpreter and ambassador of the dance of Isadora Duncan. She’s sought after as a unique contemporary artist who understands the essence of Isadora. Known as a solo dance artist for her interpretations of Duncan’s signature solos and staging of Duncan’s group masterpieces, she has also been recognized for creating powerful, contemporary works in her own voice. The purity, timelessness, authentic phrasing, and musicality of Duncan dance has been passed down to Lori through a direct line of Isadora Duncan dancers.

Lori is also a choreographer and the Artistic Director of The Isadora Duncan Dance Company. The company performs regularly and increasingly garners invitations to perform around the world. Lori herself is a dynamo as well as a dancer of supreme grace and appeal.

I’m excited about this new endeavor, and I hope my readers will tune in, either live or via archive. If you’re listening live, then, please, phone in! I’d love to hear from you. Consider this an invitation!

Independent Artists & Thinkers

 

Lori Belilove

BlogTalkRadio show

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