The Artist's Path

Pledge to Love Makes the World Go Round!

2011-12-15T13:30:00.000-08:00

· Path Video Click HERE

· Kickstarter Site Click HERE

· Win Two Box Seats for the 107th

o Anniversary Show of The Elks Opera House

· Nominate Best Love Song Ever

Details Below

1608 St Andrews Way

Prescott, AZ 86301-4431

www.TheArtistsPath.org gailm@TheArtistsPath.org

928 771 2554 Cell: 928 713 7915

As you know funding for the arts is at an all time low and The Artist's Path is seeking alternative ways to funding Path Festival 2012, Love Makes the World Go Round. An online program called KickStarter allows us to reach a wider pool of potential donors. However we wish to begin with those folks we know, or have met, or who have heard of our work.

Our second festival takes a look at the many faces/facets of Love through Monologues, Movement, and Music drawing on artists from California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Also included will be a mid week screening of an Indy film on the theme of Love through a partnership with the Prescott Film Festival. And finally in keeping with our mission we will have a humanities scholar speak on the place of Love in Dramatic Literature. The festival will give opportunities to local artists who so enrich our community while providing new and engaging works from artists across the Southwest.

If you would consider doing two things for The Artist's Path, we will be able to accomplish all that we need to for Path 2012. First please forward this email to all your friends asking them to support this project and second please go to our Kickstarter Project Site and pledge a donation.

Any amount from $1 up. And your credit card is not charged until 60 days from the launch of the fundraiser. Further, your pledge only becomes a donation if the full $17,000 goal is met by the deadline, Noon, Feb. 13, 2012.

The bulk of our budget goes to three areas: Artist Compensation, Venue Costs, and Marketing. While the KickStarter site has a profile of our project, to learn even more about the mission and work of The Artist's Path, visit our website at www.TheArtistsPath.org. We are also setting up partnerships with five local non profits who deal with children, poverty, social justice, and arts issues. Each will be profiled at one of the 5 performances and 10% of net proceeds for that performance will go to that organization.

'Path' recognizes there are many demands placed on your giving. If you are unable to participate in KickStarter, we hope you will be able to donate directly to the project with a check posted to the address above, spread the word and/or attend the festival April 13-22. If you are on Facebook and Twitter please Like Us, repost our Project Video and the link to the Kickstarter site. Put a link to Kickstarter in your email signature. So please share our story with family, friends, colleagues through snailmail, conversation, email, etc. Every gift no matter how small builds toward our goal. AND we are awarding two Box Seats to the 107th Anniversary Show of The Historic Elks Opera House in Prescott to the person who pledges the largest gift by Midnight December 31, 2011. This show happens on Feb. 18, 2012 right here in Prescott. Also nominate Best Love Song Ever. Details at the Kickstarter site under the first reward level.

We so appreciate the time you've taken to read this and any action you can take to assist us. Remember...

Feed an Artist; Feed Your Soul!

Warmest regards,

Gail Mangham, Chairman and Artistic Director

Neal Mangham Vice Chairman

Elisabeth Ruffner, Secretary-Treasurer

Art and Nature

2011-12-03T13:18:00.000-08:00

Art takes nature as its model. (Aristotle)

I find I'm drawn to art and nature in equal measure. Nature is where I claim my soul in stillness. Art is where I claim my shared humanity. I would not want ever to sacrifice one for the other...Gail Mangham

SEVEN Comes to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

2011-11-21T15:07:00.000-08:00

Recently The Artist's Path reprised SEVEN at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Student Allison Cisneros wrote a fine piece on the production and I post it here for our wonderful cast, crew, audience and the seven women whose lives are chronicled by seven women American playwrights.

SEVEN Shows Struggle, Optimism

By: Allison Cisneros, Copy Editor

“SEVEN” is an amazing work of theatre, global relationships and justice. It began when Vital Voices Global Partnership paired seven recognized, strong women with seven playwrights. Women from countries such as Russia, Guatemala and Cambodia were interviewed and their words were combined into a script. “SEVEN” has been performed across the globe and was brought to the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Prescott campus on Oct. 20 in the Davis Learning Center.

The Artist’s Path is a non-profit organization that asks what artists can do to stimulate change in the world. One of the ways it explores the role of the artist in society is putting on plays such as “SEVEN.” Gail Mangham is the head of the project and enjoys bringing the Artist’s Path to ERAU.

“SEVEN” tells the stories of seven women who overcame horrible obstacles to become successful and work to positively change their world. For example, Marina Pisklakova-Parker was the first person to start a domestic violence hotline in Russia, a country where 14,000 women die each year from their husbands abusing them. She overcame the death of her biggest supporter, her husband, and death threats aimed at her son. However, her domestic violence hotline has grown out of her office and is now helping many women across Russia get the help they need.

Annabella de Leon is a Congresswoman in Guatemala who has had her life threatened in a corrupt system, but has been re-elected to continue her work. De Leon grew up very poor and witnessed another women throwing dirt in her family’s food. She decided she wanted to get her family out of the poverty of society that wears people down until they are so lost that they ruin the food for another family. De Leon went to school where she was told to leave because she wasn’t rich, but she stayed. She persevered to become a trusted Congresswoman of Guatemala.

The stories share the same pattern. Each woman was living the status quo until an irreversible change made them rise to the challenge of social, positive change. These changes included watching a mother lie to her husband’s new wife, witnessing a woman dying in childbirth, gang rape, and being beaten with clubs as people laugh. It’s astounding how much horror these selected women had thrown into their lives to emerge as leaders of their community.

The women persevered because they believed they were doing the right thing. Their goals were recognized as positive such as providing health care to women in Afghanistan. They received support because their change was necessary and all the community needed was a leader.

None of the women believed they could create such a substantial change until they began to move out of the horrible events of their lives.

Rexanne Bell, who plays Inez McCormack, says “It doesn’t get easier to hear.” Reynessa Sanchez, who plays Hafsat Abiola, states “Listening to these women, it feels like no matter what, you can get up and do anything.” Maria Forte, who plays Mukhtar Mai, says it isn’t about a “happy, cookie-cutter ending.” The actresses agreed on the fact that these women survived such horrors and feeling so empowered is the most humbling aspect of all.

“SEVEN” was given a standing ovation and deserves a far larger audience than it received. “SEVEN” is an amazing story of strength, determination in the face of discrimination, and women who create positive change. It is a play of darkness and light, terrifying events and positive people.

What is Love Contest?

2011-07-28T14:46:00.000-07:00

Love wanders down so many paths, takes many forms. Let's explore the universe of Love. In an earlier blog you read an excerpt of an inter generational example of love titled The Quilter. Now click on The End of the Affair below and read about another case of Love, love gone wrong--

The End of the Affair

The theme for The Artist's Path for 2012 is Love. Below are the opening paragraphs in Wickipedia on the subject of Love.

In the comment section of this blog send your meanings, definitions, thoughts, stories of love. Send photos too. I'll post them on this Blog or at www.TheArtistsPath.org. If you wish to submit photos, email as jpeg attachment to gailm@theartistspath.org. The Best Entry will win Dinner for Two at a Prescott, AZ restaurant subject to needed editing and agreement to have their entry used in Path 2012. Deadline: November 15, 2011.

In English, the word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from generic pleasure ("I loved that meal") to intense interpersonal attraction ("I love my partner"). "Love" can also refer specifically to the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love, to the sexual love of eros (cf. Greek words for love), to the emotional closeness of familial love, or to the platonic love that defines friendship, to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love. This diversity of uses and meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, even compared to other emotional states.

Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts.

Helen Fisher defines what could be understood as love as an evolved state of the survival instinct, primarily used to keep human beings together against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the species through reproduction.

Let's Explore What...

The Artist's Path Announces 'Path, 2012'--The Artist's Response to Love

2011-07-06T21:01:00.000-07:00

Where do you go for inspiration to write a 5 to 15 minute monologue that somehow is connected with love? I look lots of places, but I begin with my own life. Here's a passage from a monologue I'm working on titled The Quilter. This the final bit of the piece in which a grandmother is quilting with her granddaughter telling about her last conversation with the little girl's great grandmother.

Two days before she died I was on the phone with her, long distance. She sounded good. Not as if she'd be gone in 48 hours. I asked her how she was doin? And she said, "I feel like I'm just losing myself, kinda floating. You know I'm off of my last, great adventure." I asked her, “Margaret what’s your earliest memory?” She paused, I don’t know if she was still smoking at that point, but often when we talked on the phone, I’d hear her take a drag on her cigarette while she accessed her memory banks. “Well”,--she always seemed to start her thoughts with a long, drawn out 'well' as if she was giving herself time to collect her thoughts. So she said, “Well, I can see myself in this drainage ditch along the road. It’s summer; and it’s hot as hell. (she grew up deep in the heart of Cajun country.) Oh OK you're right. That’s another quarter, but she said it not me.

Then she said, “I’m dripping with sweat. I never did perspire. And I sure as heck didn’t glow. There's not a cloud in the sky. But the sky's not that crisp blue you get on a cold, dry winter’s day. No it’s kinda milky blue. And the ditch is still damp with dew, so it must be morning. And I’m surrounded by dandelions, a carpet of yellow all around me. My arms are out and I’m twirling in circles. Even now I can feel a smile on my face. Don’t know where I am, but the flowers sure are pretty in the morning light.” Those were her exact words. For some reason they just stuck with me. She died two days later, in the morning. I still miss her.

Now why don't you 'access your memory banks' and write a monologue for Path 2012 and send it to gailm@theartistspath.org. Start writing. Don't over think it. Just go for it!
NO FEAR!

Details at www.TheArtistsPath.org

A Message from The Artist's Path, Supporting Artists Who Shape Our World

2011-03-09T17:20:00.000-08:00

In the deep of night with the wind moaning, she hid her two sons under her burqa and brought medical care to the women of remote villages in Afghanistan. On the grey, rain drenched streets of North Belfast she works to bring dignity and security to women who have never heard of The Declaration of Human Rights. In far flung villages dotted among the waving rice fields of Cambodia, she trumpets a message of democracy. Proud daughter of a slain president and a gifted mother, she honors their memory daily in her work to bring rebirth to Nigeria. In a country where impunity is queen, she risks her life to better the lives of others in Guatemala. In the teeming urban canyons of Moscow, she waits by the phone, praying that she can save the next woman who calls. In a small village in Pakistan she defies tradition, chooses life over death, opening a school that brings the promise of a better future.

Reynessa Sanchez as Hafsat Abiola, Nigeria
Maria Forte as Muhktar Mai, Pakistan
Kate Hawkes as Marina Pisklakova-Parker, Russia
Pat Anderson as Annabella de Leio, Guatemala
Rexanne Bell as Inez McCormack, Northern Ireland
Nancy Bonini as Farida Azizi, Afghanistan
Peggy Martinez as Mu Sochua, Cambodia

Scattered around the globe these seven women have become sisters recognizing in one another a fire that burns continuously, that impels them to strive for change against overwhelming odds. Their seven stories, with the help of seven women American playwrights, is told in the play SEVEN. Don't miss this moving tribute to the human spirit.

And another woman's story. She was seven, a white child of Africa, a blithe spirit that danced, and skipped and jumped with only the joy that arises out of a life of love and song and dance and wonder. But under all the light was a darkness that crept in, bringing fear, brutality and finally death. And yet in the end the ties of love that bind the child, Lizzy, and her black nanny, Salamina, prove too strong for the cruel fingers of apartheid.

Belinda Torrey as Lizzy in The Syringa Tree

Nelson Mandela said, “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” His words find substance in the play---The Syringa Tree by Pamela Gein.

I hope you will attend both these plays as well as the New Play Readings and the talk by Paula Cizmar one of the playwrights of SEVEN. Also on April 8th, following the performance of The Syringa Tree, Terri New will perform from her moving work, Voices of the Velvet Revolution. This is the first festival of The Artist's Path, Supporting Artists Who Shape Our World.

Gail Mangham, Artistic Director, Program Details at The Artist's Path

SEVEN at Granite Performing Arts Center 218 N. Granite St Prescott AZ

Saturdays April 9 and 16 at 7 PM, Sunday, April 10, 2 PM Adult $12 Senior/Students $10

Tickets & Program Details Online at Tickets for SEVEN or

Buy at Door or Call Gail 928 771 2554

The Syringa Tree Fridays April 8 & 15, 7 PM Sat. April 9 2 PM

Tickets at Elks Opera House Prescott, AZ Box Office Tues. - Fri. 10 to 2 928 777 1367

The Creation of SEVEN —Prescott College With Playwright Paula Cizmar, Saturday, April 16, 2 PM Free Paula Cizmar, award winning playwright from California, will explore the process of the writing of the play SEVEN presented at Prescott College in April 2011. Ms Cizmar was one of seven playwrights who collaborated on the writing of SEVEN

New Play Readings at Prescott College

April 12, 13, 14 7 PM Free! Help Us Choose the Best Plays.

Play Readings and Lecture will be at , Granite Performing Arts Center

218 N. Granite St., Prescott.

Seven: Powerful Women,Compassionate Voices

2011-03-06T15:58:00.000-08:00

Kate Hawkes as Marina Pisklakova-Parker in SEVEN

In a converted rectangular warehouse, with black curtains draped across the ends, the tiled expanse between shimmering under fluorescent lights, 7 chairs were arranged in a shallow half circle centered on a tall wooden stool/podium. An old-fashioned dial-face black telephone sat atop.

Next time we met at the library, with seven chairs and the phone on the tall stool. Tonight we meet in yet another space but I know the seven chairs and the phone will be there.

Eight women, seven readers and one director, fill each of these spaces with energy, humor, dedication and color. We are bringing our diverse skills, experience and passions to a rehearsal process. For all our differences we have at least one thing in common along with our gender. We are honored to be a physical manifestation of words that have been collected into a script.

SEVEN is a powerful reader’s theatre docu-play. It was initiated in 2006 by Vital Voices Global Partnership and had been performed in many languages throughout the world. I am a reader in the upcoming April production in Prescott, AZ .

There are times in my life when I am blessed to participate in something that is profoundly personally meaningful to me as well as being something that I know will be the same to all those who participate. Inherent in its shape and form, Seven provides a both a cradle and a crucible by which we are nurtured and challenged to step into our power.

Seven remarkable women from around the world, each of whom through personal experience blended with a driving sense of service and justice, shared their stories with seven successful, skilled and passionate female playwrights. The form is something as simple as 7 women of all ages and cultural, ethnic backgrounds, moving around an almost empty stage holding black folders with pages of words.

The phone is the only prop. It was the lifeline and connector for many of the women on their journeys and the means by which they could/can reach so many others.

The outcome is a deep sharing between real, living, powerhouse women, playwrights, actresses and audiences. It is an experience that shocks, infuriates, inspires and empowers all who participate from whatever place in their lives they arrive, and however it is they are there.

I look at the seven women with whom I am playing and working (it is both) and I am in awe and joy. I don’t know each of their stories and still have their personal names muddled with their character names, but this is what I know as a scatter of images.

We are mothers,grandmothers and grand-daughters and range in age from young woman to elder. We are impeccably dressed in tailored pantsuits and we wear short skirts and boots. We bring in scarves and jackets for each other to try for our costumes. We wear glasses, enlarge the writing in the scripts, share mints, slurp coffee and swig water.

We have husbands and sweethearts who are waiting for us at home or working overseas – each of them lending support for the show we are striving to prepare. We have family coming from as far away as Afghanistan, Puerto Rico and Australia to see the play. Our small children come and play quietly and patiently in the place where we are rehearsing.

We struggle with blocking and we look to our director for her solutions, and she asks us for ours. We slip in and out of dialects as we either learn and layer them in as accurately as possible for our character, or work to overcome a natural accented English that can undermine the words from the page that we are committed to share.

Over many years I have been involved in similar work, bringing the real experiences of people who have overcome great odds to find grace and integrity, to the live stage. I believe absolutely in the power of live theatre as a medium touching back to the days of the Shaman and ritual, to heal and build community. In the months ahead I will be bringing some of that work, Performing Wellness, to the stage again and beginning work with new writers whose stories will make it to the stage, in the hands, voices and bodies of actors.

Warmly welcomed by this group, to which I arrived after they were underway, I am encouraged, nurtured and humbled. Some of us have years of experience in theatre, others bring a rawness and innocence that I have long since lost. Together we create something that is truly exhilarating. It is not just the stories from the seven remarkable women we will be sharing, there are the personal unspoken stories within each of us who tell them. I want to collect those stories.

Just this week there has been the ruling on hate speech/free speech, regarding the rights of anti-gay protesters at the funerals of veterans. For some reason I made a connection. It takes courage and disciplined responsibility to know when/how to speak and when/how to be quiet. Sadly and shockingly, there are too many people who operate from fear and anger, without the courage it takes to see the Other as human too. We can only have true human rights if we proceed with respect, dignity and true compassion.

The women whose stories we are sharing in Seven have this in spades. Each of them, within their country and specific area of concern, work to bring women’s issues and basic human rights to their culture, community and the world. They did/do it without invading the rights of others and with empathy and compassion. They do their work with strength, courage, humor, love, determination and absolute dedication.

We will only succeed in bringing about real change when we come to it with personal integrity and compassion for all. The work we do within, nurturing and empowering ourselves through body, mind and spirit, enables us to do our best out in the world.

The work for each of us bringing the play Seven to our community, requires that we also bring our most complete and healthy selves to the stage in order to fully bring the women we read to life. We must balance ourselves in the world beyond this play. There is much we can learn from the women that we read and hear each time we get together.

As I move along my path in the immediate and years ahead, this experience with the seven women from the play Seven will inspire me. As much, and perhaps even more so, the seven women with whom I am sharing this production also nurtures and encourages. I will put my work in the world. I will endeavor to be kind, courageous, graceful and truthful.

So, thank you to the Vital Voices Global Partnership who made this play possible in the first place and continue to promote and inspire incredible work in the world. Thank you to the playwrights who brought their immense experience and passion to the project. Thank you to the seven remarkable women who gave their voices to the world in so many ways and still do

Thank you to Gail, Peggy, Pat, Reynessa, Rexanne, Nancy and Maria in whose company I get to play, create, learn and bask over the next month or so. You are all shining lights.

Kate Hawkes

SEVEN will be performed at The Granite Performing Arts Center, April 9, 10, 16.
For Details and Tickets visit, www.TheArtistsPath.org

We Did It!

2010-10-27T13:41:00.000-07:00

The Artist's Path

is pleased to announce

The Prescott Cast of SEVEN

Nancy Bonini as Farida Azizi, Afghanistan
Pat Anderson as Annabella de Leio, Guatemala
Maria Forte as Muhktar Mai, Pakistan
Rexanne Bell as Inez McCdormack, Northern Ireland
Peggy Martinez as Mu Sochua, Cambodia
Reynessa Sanchez as Hafsat Abiola, Nigeria
Kate Hawkes as Marina Pisklakova-Parker, Russia

Don't Miss This Fabulous Cast in SEVEN

Coming to Prescott College April 9, 10, 16
For Details and Tickets Go to www.TheArtistsPath.org

She's Back!

2010-06-25T09:36:00.000-07:00

'ZaZa' returns to the Elks Opera House, 105 years after her first appearance in 1905. Booked into the Hardwicke Theater in Phoenix, Florence 'ZaZa' Roberts, first lady of the San Francisco theater at the turn of the century, made an extra appearance in Prescott on Monday evening, February 20, to open the new Elks Opera House.

On August 14 Gail Mangham brings 'ZaZa' back to Prescott to celebrate the Grand Opening of The Newly Restored Elks Opera House. For the past four years Mangham has performed Tea with 'ZaZa' at various venues in Prescott, including Sharlot Hall Museum's Blue Rose Theater where it premiered in January, 2006, as Don't Despise Me, a tag line from the play Marta of the Lowlands, the play that opened the Elks Opera House over a century ago. Written by Parker Anderson the original script was the result of initial research in San Francisco on Roberts' life. She left virtually no private diaries or letters so all that is known of her comes from newspapers, magazines and a few journals. Over the past four years Mangham has continued researching 'ZaZa' to expand on Anderson’s initial efforts, shaping the play over time. As newspapers across the nation scan their archives into the internet, new pieces of the 'ZaZa' puzzle become available. Tea with 'ZaZa' changes with each performance.

Mangham plays 'ZaZa' in 1925, aged 54 and about 18 months before her death. The work is a study of the actor and the theater of the turn of the last century. As such, it is a piece with historical, even anthropological overtones. But 'ZaZa's life is in some ways Every Woman's life--including struggles to find her way in a man's world, love and marriage, great joy and great sorrow, bearing witness as one century fades into the dawn of a new one, full of hope and promise. In the first decade of the 20th century Florence is at the height of her career, but as the promise of the new century faded with the onset of World War I so 'ZaZa's luster faded with age.

The Artist's Path, a nonprofit that showcases Art that Educates, Inspires, and Entertains presents Tea with 'ZaZa', August 14 at 2 PM and 7:30 PM at the Elks Opera House. Joining Mangham and taking the stage for the first part of the event is Lecia Breen, a newcomer to Prescott, whose sublime voice showcases music from Broadway to Opera. Don't miss The Three Divas--Mangham, Breen and the beautifully restored Elks Opera House. Tickets are available at the Door or Online at www.elksoperahouse.com. Adults $18 – Seniors (55+)/Students $13 (inclusive of all charges). Call 928-777-1367 for information and ticketing. Parker Anderson will conduct a free tour of the opera house at 4:30 PM, midway between the two performances. More information is available at www.TheArtistsPath.org. There will be a Talk Back with Gail and Lecia in the lobby following the performance. Net Proceeds benefit The Elks Opera House Foundation.

Quotes I like...

2010-02-16T11:50:00.000-08:00

While watching again one of my favorite television shows, West Wing, I came across some lines that I wanted to share with readers of this blog.

In Episode 17 of Season III entitled The U. S. Poet Laureate, the character Tabatha Fortis (poet laureate played by Laura Dern, photo below) says to character Toby Ziegler: An artist's job is to captivate you for however long we've asked for your attention. If we stumble into the truth, we got lucky.

I like that.

Episode by Laura Glasser and Aaron Sorkin

Thoughts on The Path of the Artist

2009-11-08T13:46:00.000-08:00

#1. Creativity comes from the Mind’s Eye. Each person has it available to his/her being. Few too many use that creativity to enhance their personal life or that of others.

Being an artist, a person of creativity, expands the whole person. An artist thinks outside a box created by the collective thought. An artist sees more, hears more, perceives more [possibilities], and makes Life larger, greater, and new.

One can be an artist in business or in society or in government. Allowing time within the hustle and bustle of today’s lifestyle, to be quiet and to visualize unexplored ideas, colors, shapes, rhythms, movements, negotiations, etc. brings forth the greatest contributions to Living. The artist develops a greater awareness of any and everything of Life.

#2. For me, developing my artistic skills has enriched my life, allowed me to expand far beyond my shell of protection/my cocoon. I certainly recognized it when I reignited a community theater group, while living in Saudi Arabia, which resulted in other groups coming to life, presenting a platform of expression for hundreds of latent and talented performers. There, I found a voice within that was screaming to speak out.

#3. The function of an artist in society is to bring about positive change, stimulate thoughts outside the normal collective thought, introduce new methods of doing a task, operating a business, or handling a project. The artist may create beauty where it had not existed.

#4. My Artist’s Path has been to continue to create. Sometimes, I am working with paint brush in hand; sometimes, I am hand-dying silks; sometimes I practice enjoying music of my own talents or just listening; sometimes, I am developing my Being on a spiritual level; sometimes, I am improving my relations, or managing my finances differently.

No-thing is cast in stone; no-thing is fact forever, only until it is replaced by another fact. Life is bubbling with possibilities.

Children in the classrooms should be encouraged to learn from new and exciting angles, that charge them with enthusiasm. I, especially, feel that the current school systems should be revamped and updated. The children of today are born into a different level of energetics, with the in-born computer adaptivity, multi-stimuli excitation, and action-oriented interests.

Being a “mature” person, I see that the environment of quietude while studying is far outdated. The above realities should be considered as forms of change for the school systems.

I feel we will expand our Living with allowing in-class artistry and creativity. Children need to be encouraged to think and create, rather than regurgitate information.

It is known and practiced in many corporate environments, that the creative leaders take time for themselves to expand the possibilities, which can bring forth new concepts and implement change.

So be It.
Barbara Erickson

　

The Power of Sand Animation from The Ukraine

2009-09-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

Kiev, Ukraine

Mykhailivskyy was famous for its priceless mosaics.

Some have been preserved in nearby Sofiyivskyy Sobor.

Please take a moment to watch this video from youtube. I believe it illustrates so beautifully the theme of The Artist's Path in 2011--The Artist's Response to Conflict and Social Crisis. Let me know your thoughts...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo&feature=fvst

Theme Music for 2011 Event

2009-09-21T20:08:00.000-07:00

The "Choose the Theme Music" for The Artist's Path's first event is up on the web site. Just go to http://www.theartistspath.org/ and Donate $10 and send your suggestion in. Next September 11, 2010 the Board will choose the suggestion they like best, and that person will win 4 passes. We don't know yet what the ticket prices will be but probably $30 to $40; so this is a good deal. Now then tell us what you want to hear for theme music for The Playwright's Response to Conflict and Social Crisis.

The Power of Music

2009-09-21T07:50:00.000-07:00

Hugh Laurie aka House Sings a Protest Song

I've been thinking of a holding a contest to select a theme song for our inaugural event in 2011--The Artist's Path through Conflict and Social Crisis and found this on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1jcguMneDg

The Power of Art for the Individual & Society

2009-09-20T10:23:00.000-07:00

Picasso's Guernica, 1937

I know the artist can institute change in both the individual and society. In terms of the individual, my sister had lymphoma, a terminal cancer disease for six years. As you can imagine the treatments, chemo, radiation, etc, were awful and debilitating. Sometimes I wondered if the treatment was worse than the disease. But my sister continued to live her life and she decided to take acting classes being taught up in Westchester County by an actress (I later took lessons from her) and although these did not prolong her life,they enabled her to confront each day with more optimism. I attended some of the classes and I saw a side of my sister that I never knew before, even doing improvs.These acting classes enabled her to find some joy in her last year.

As for changing society, some artists moved from their art to political activities, expressing themselves against a particular regime or against war or the A-bomb or some other cause. I think of Picasso's La Guernica, a wall mural that spoke out against the Franco bombing of civilians during the Spanish Civil War. It is interesting that after the war, Franco built a monument to his forces but excluded those of the Republic even though the latter was the elected government. Closer to home, artists joined and contributed their art to the civil rights movement and to the anti-Vietnam War movement. Art is a wonderful tool to express protest and to advocate political and social change. Karin says that art talks to the soul of mankind. That may be and we may appreciate it for its beauty, but it also has political and social power as well.

Finally, in my own case, I was stuck in an unhappy professional situation that, for various reasons, I could not escape. In fact, my work was making me sick. My doctor suggested therapy but when I called the local shrink and discovered he would charge $75 an hour, I decided to return to acting and began auditions for the local community theater. So in my case, acting was a form of therapy that enabled me to survive some hard academic years. Of course, it is always risky to try and identify one variable as the defining factor in a life/societal change. And while these incidents are largely anecdotal, the lack of empirical evidence does not negate their veracity.

Ernest Giglio, Prescott, AZ

The Power of Sculpture

2009-09-09T13:58:00.000-07:00

Not long ago I sent out an email to over 200 people asking them to respond to the question: Has a piece of art ever changed you in what you feel is a significant fashion? This is my response as promised.

In the fall of 1980 I was studying theater at the University of Texas in Austin. One day when I had a bit of time I wandered into the art building. In the center of a spacious, starkly white room was a quite large plaster copy of an ancient roman sculpture which is itself a copy in marble of an early Hellenistic piece from 220-230 B.C. thought to be done in bronze and lost in time and space. Of course I did not know all this then. At first I thought it was a rather smooth, white nude of a man reclining; but I found myself drawn to something about it.

It was early afternoon and I was quite alone in this vast space. About 15’ from the piece was a bench. Sitting I studied the figure. Here was a man, a warrior mortally wounded, his sword dropped at his side as he struggles to rise against the pain of the fatal wound in his side. I sat motionless taking in every detail until a moment came when I imagined that I could see movement—the right hand pressing down for support, the left leg drawing up to gain a footing on the shield on which he has collapsed, his face a mask of concentration and refusal to give in to the pain, the knowledge of imminent death.

The illusion was so real I rose from the bench feeling a strange desire to reach out and help him. Tears slipped down my face and more so when I finally saw the title of the piece, A Dying Gaul. He would never rise. But the artist had caught him forever on the razor edge countless soldiers over eons have found themselves—between death and the urge to heed the call of duty and honor.

Never again would I listen to a report of bombs exploding and statistics of the wounded and the dead as if such events were not a part of my world. They may wear Kevlar and desert fatigues, drive humvees instead of walk or ride horses, but they are the Dying Gaul who in his nudity seems to stand for every man who has walked a battlefield, whether in ancient Greece, on the steppes of the vast plains of Russia, the frozen forests of Europe, the rolling depths of oceans and the vastness of the skies, the jungles of Vietnam or the desolate wastes and urban horrors of Iraq and Afghanistan.

He is my husband, my son, my brother, my father, my friend and now my sister. I must rise and give succor and seek ways to ensure not only that he comes home to me, but that I build a world in which she never has to leave. Gail Mangham

Won't you send to gailm@theartistspath.org your life changing experiences with art and your notions on the function of the artist in society? I will post them to this blog.

The Artist and The Spirit

2009-09-06T09:59:00.000-07:00

From Friend and Fellow Artist Muriel Haverland...

I believe that art helps raise awareness to both beauty, ugliness, tragedy and triumph in the world, touching each individual differently but moving people through their emotional response. When I watch a film or documentary, hear a poem, look at a picture or sculpture, hear a song, experience a dance, I am moved to take action. Much of my life has been manifested from my spiritual connection to an art form. I actually became an "artist" because I saw a sculpture of an Indian on bended knee bleeding into a pool (water sculpture). I wanted it so badly I could taste it, it was $40K, so I said to myself "I'll learn to do this myself..." Haven't quite gotten there, but I'm in my fourth year of sculpture welding.

Working with metal is an amazing experience. The metal tells you what it wants to be when you add heat to it. You have to listen to the metal and allow, really a metaphor for life, it too tells you what you need to hear, do and be. I remind myself all the time to LISTEN.

Artists bring pleasure, visceral experience, and spiritual meaning to people's lives. They educate, emulate life, and inspire. It is the duty of the artist to create with these concepts in mind and be genuine in all their endeavors.

I knew I liked to create, I just didn't realize how artistic I really was: I wrote a book and I write poetry; I am a motivational speaker; I had a radio show; I draw and paint; I work with wood; I do glass casting; I sculpt with clay and plaster; I am a metal sculptor. I also bake and sew. I don't feel like any medium is outside my range of interest. I started to be a serious artist (claimed it) recently (when I moved into semi-retirement). Up until then, I was just "experimenting." I feel it is my spiritual path. My artistic endeavor's are on my card, Muriel's Spirit Designs. MurielH@q.com

Welcome to The Artist's Path

2009-09-05T12:11:00.000-07:00

In the summer of 2009 Gail Mangham founded The Artist's Path with the support of Prescott College and Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott Arizona. Her years of acting, living abroad in the Middle East, and work with the many fine artists of the Prescott community inspired her to create an organization that would dedicate itself to artists, their old and new works, showcasing them in multiple venues. Moreover this venture will explore the role of the artist in society asking whether the artist can create substantive change and if so how it is effected.

Everyone is invited to ponder the following questions and if you wish to do so email your responses to gailm@theartistspath.org and she will post them to this blog.

• Do you believe that the artist can create change in an individual, in society both locally and globally? Describe how you came to believe that?
• Have you had a personal experience with an art form that you feel substantively changed you? If yes, would you please describe that experience?
• Have you thought about the function of the artist in society? Doctors heal; plumbers fix the toilet; teachers teach. What does the artist do? In a few words--given your experiences with art in its many forms-- what do you think is the function of the artist in society?
• If you are an artist looking at this, please describe Your Own Artist’s Path.