Arts Collage celebrates five years in Glen Arbor
From staff reports
The Arts Collage returns to the Lake Street Studio stage in Glen Arbor on Sunday, Aug. 1 at 8 p.m., featuring a special line-up of regional, national and international scale creative arts performers, including local poet, writer and activist Holly Wren Spaulding, contemporary dancer Gretchen Eichberger, the Little Bang Theory’s Toy Instrument Ensemble, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival’s Traveling Show. The rain location for this fifth annual Arts Collage is the Glen Arbor Township Hall. The following evening, on Monday, Aug 2., filmmaker Andrea Maio will air her production “Unknowing” at the Lake Street Studio Stage.
Spaulding and Eichberger will also perform in a theatrical dance performance called “American Document” at the Mills Community House in nearby Benzonia on Aug. 27 and 28 as part of the historic building’s 100th birthday celebration. According to the Martha Graham Foundation, this is the first civic production of “American Document” in the United States.
Holly Wren Spaulding’s poems and essays have received numerous distinctions, including five Hopwood Awards, The CuChulainn to Kavanaugh Award for Poetry (Northern Ireland) and The Leelanau Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in The Nation, The Ecologist, Z Magazine, the Glen Arbor Sun, and in the book We Are Everywhere. She was also as a researcher and consultant for the award-winning documentary “FLOW” about the global water crisis. Spaulding is the literary editor for the Dunes Review, and she teaches writing at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City while running her own business, Hende Design Lab. Spaulding’s first collection of poems, The Grass Impossibly, was released in 2008 by Michigan Writers Cooperative Press.
Gretchen Eichberger is a graduate of the School of Music at Western Michigan University and an alumnus of the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance. She recently completed graduate work in Historic Preservation at Eastern Michigan University. Eichberger’s work combines her broad academic interests to expose and examine socio-political and geographical concerns. In addition, she was the artistic director of the successful multimedia exhibit and performance “Lore” which took place this June in Benzonia’s Mills Community House and featured a host of regional performance, literary and visual artists.
Little Bang Theory (Toy Instrument Ensemble: Frank Pahl, Terri Sarris, Doug Shimmin): “This is called Toy Suite #3,” announces Frank Pahl, the troubadour and visual artist behind the experimental-music trio Little Bang Theory. “The band’s name comes from the title of an essay by Frederic Rzewski, an improvisational musician whose key idea is that each note can lead to a universe of sound,” Pahl explains as he sits proudly in front of his toy orchestra, an assemblage of noisemaking toys: two baby-blue Playschool pianos, ukuleles, xylophones, a song flute, a variety of melodicas, woodblocks, glockenspiels, cowbells and indefinable homemade objects, to name a few of the unexpected instruments.
But don’t assume for a moment that a toy orchestra is a euphemism for a purposefully chaotic flurry of indecipherable sound. Little Bang Theory’s performances are organized, tight and focused; theirs is the restless adventure of a desperado galloping of into the horizon, combined with the calculated cleverness of “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” The results could be the soundtrack to a Dr. Seuss story.
The Ann Arbor Film Festival’s Traveling Show: The Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF) was created as an alternative to commercial cinema, and 40 years later the AAFF remains true to its original mission of promoting film as an art form, supporting bold, visionary filmmakers, promoting the art of film & new media, and providing communities with remarkable cinematic experiences. Since its inception, thousands of influential filmmakers and artists have showcased early work at the AAFF, including luminaries such as: Kenneth Anger, Agnes Varda, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Gus Van Sant, Barbara Hammer, Lawrence Kasdan, Devo and George Lucas. The AAFF was also a pioneer of the traveling tour concept, having launched tour shows in Paris, Los Angeles & Berkeley in 1964.
“The AAFF has been at the forefront of experimental and avant-garde programming for decades, and Brooklyn audiences appreciated the opportunity to see the latest work from both leading and emerging independent filmmakers.” — Florence Almozini, Director of Programming, BAMcinématek, NYC
“The AAFF touring show is a superbly curated collection that allows Filmforum to provide its audience with the latest and best, well-documented and supported with publicity materials.” — Adam Hyman, Programmer, Los Angeles Filmforum.