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Celebrating The Life and Times of Ludwig Kuttner Ludwig Kuttner is a visionary, an inventor, a friend of the arts born in Munich in 1946. His deep interest and understanding in how history shapes our future along with his firm belief in the creation of beauty and value over prosperity led to financial success in real estate, product development and investment. He’s a cofounder of the New York Academy of Art, the Charlottesville Angel Network, and the IX Art Park, board member of the Albert Schweitzer Foundation, Tibet House, and a longtime philanthropist. When approached to create a documentary film about Ludwig Kuttner I immediately knew we had an opportunity to tell the story of the second half of the 20th century in the eyes of a visionary who also contributed to redefined the cultural landscape in Charlottesville. Montes-Bradley The documentary film about Ludwig Kuttner’s life, will start immediate production and is expected to be completed for a possible release in Summer-Fall 2022. Executive Producer: Johannah Castelman Producer: Soledad Liendo and Heritage Film Project Written and Directed by Eduardo Montes-Bradley Made possible with a gift from Susan Krischel This post will continue to be updated as the production progresses.

What is all this talk about the Lincoln Memorial and Daniel Chester French? While working on the final brushstrokes to Black Fiddlers, we have been quietly working on the development of an extraordinary biographical portrayal on Daniel Chester French. Who’s French? Exactly! Daniel Chester French is one of America’s most distinguished sculptors and his Opus Magnum is now undergoing an eighteen-million-dollar restoration as part of the Lincoln Memorial centennial. The work will be unveiled and rededicated on May 28, 2012. However, the name of Daniel Chester French, the artist who conceived and carried on the work of art that framed and served as the stage to Marian Andersons, and as a shrine to the Civil Rights Movement, remains in the shadows of public interest. We now intent to correct that oversight with a 30 minute documentary film that will bring his life and work to audiences all over the world, a life and work that went far beyond the Lincoln Memorial to embellish the public spaces, parks and avenues, state and academic buildings with the extraordinary gift of his delicate art. Daniel Chester French’s film will be centered around Chesterwood, his home-studio nested the natural beauty of western Massachusetts. From Chesterwood we will approach his early life in Concord, where the intellectual milieu of the ninetieth century nourished his appetite for beauty and the arts. It was there, in Concord, that his professional career was launched with the unveiling of The Minute Man in time for the Centenarian of the American Revolution. While at Chesterwood we’re planning to explore the delicate figure of Andromeda, the eternal custodian of the mythical space, that other female figure that together with Memory at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, are silent witnesses to the artist infatigable pursue of perfection. During the coming winter months, we are also planing to follow French’s footsteps in Rome and Florence where the sculptor first came in contact with a urban landscape where human figures made of marble and bronze, shared with citizens a common space, birthing from the same air. Daniel Chester French, is an ambitions documentary to be produced by Heritage Film Project and the Documentary Film Fund with the support of Chesterwood and under the fiscal sponsorship of The National Trust for Historic Preservation.

An Encounter in Concord, Massachusetts At last, I met Michael Richman! Who’s Michael Richman? Simply put is the most qualified to talk about Daniel Chester French. He has lived with his subject his entire adult life, and he’s one of the few scholars to have met the sculptor’s daughter when she was still living at Chesterwood, his summer-studio and retreat in the Berkshires, not far from Stockbridge where Arlo Guthrie (Remember Alice?), still as his home just a half a mile from the railroad track. The meeting took place in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery where we run into a man walking his dog, a man that seemed to know where all the bodies are buried. Hawthorne, Emerson, Alcott, and Daniel Chester French. But we didn’t drive all the way to concord to visit graves but a Cenotaph, a memorial dedicated to three of the Melvin brothers, local chaps who perished during the civil war. The Melvin Memorial is one of French’s most exquisite works, and unique example in many ways in America’s landscape of public works of art in the early 20th century. The encounter with Michael Richman was brief, enough to recognize in each other as worthy partner to tackle a biographical portrayal of Daniel Chester French on a documentary film. Next time I see Michael it will be at his place in Portland, Maine in October. By then we would have already talked for hours on the phone, and corresponded via email about The Melvin Memorial and so many other works of art chiseled by the man who brought us together today in Concord.

Chesterwood, MA – One comes to semi-secluded sites such as this to collect thoughts, to walk on the woods, to visit nearby cantinas and try local libations. But since I don’t drink and I have a very bad relationship with the insects living in the woods around here, I must concentrate solely in my thoughts, and Chesterwood is designed to help you achieve the goal. Someone said today that a prominent artist, visiting Chesterwood in the early 1900, said that one comes out of this place transformed, changed. The visitor’s, who’s name I don’t recall preceded me and many other artists in residency at Chesterwood in the art of thinking and sleeping. Yes, I forgot to mention that since the day I arrived I have been collecting thoughts and sleeping like a log, with vivid and inexplicable dreams in technicolor. However, it is important to mention that my quarters are separate from the main house that once was the summer home and studio of Daniel Chester French. In fact, my home away from home is a cottage designed as a secondary studio for the sculpture, about four hundred yards south of the formal residence, closer to the Housatonic River. The Lower Studio According to those who know better, French needed an ancillary studio where he could work in seclusion whenever the presence of family, friends, visitors, clients, models and assistants in the main Studio became distracting. To build this cottage-studio hired neighbor Will Hawkins to in 1905. Located at the edge of the pasture across the road from the main Studio and sitting on the crest of a hill overlooking the Housatonic River, the two-story clapboard structure, dubbed the “Lower Studio” by the sculptor had one big workroom with a large north skylight and a small casting room. As with the main Studio, a railroad track and flatcar were employed, but there were three small tracks instead of one large one. By pushing a sculpture out onto a deck above the river, French could walk fifty feet down the hill and view his work as if it were placed on a five-story building. This studio was christened “The Meadowlark” in 1932 when the sculptor’s nephew Prentiss French and his wife, Helen, expanded it and began using it as a summer domicile. Beginning in 1983, it was the site of the Guggenheim Sculptor-in-Residence program. During the summer, demonstrations of the visiting sculptor’s technique were given here. Today, and for the next two weeks, this will be home.

August in Western Massachusetts Those are perhaps my favorite four words together when presented in that order. Destination in mind is Chesterwood, home studio of Daniel Chester French for a two-week residency. During those two weeks I will be working on a new orientation film for the home-museum and working on the script of a feature documentary film about the life and works of Daniel Chester French which is to be completed before Memorial Day 2022 for the rededication of the Lincoln Memorial. While at Chesterwood I will have the opportunity to visit the Concord Museum and meet with experts Tom Putman a David Wood. On that same day I will be guided on a visit Sleepy Hollow, by Dan Preston and Michael Richman, curators of the Daniel Chester French papers. While at the cemetery, I’m planning to pay my respects to Washington Irving, Andrew Carnegie, Walter Chrysler, Samuel Gompers, Elizabeth Arden, Leona Helmsley, Brooke Astor, and William Rockefeller to name just a few. If all goes well, on the way back to Chesterwood I’ll have a chance to stop at Alice’s Restaurant in Stockbridge, “just a half a mile from the railroad tracks” where “you can get anything you want”, excepting Alice of course.

Acabo de desayunarme, aunque tarde, como de costumbre, que hace unos días murió Horacio Gonzalez a causa del puto virus nuestro de cada día. Habían pasado muchos años desde nuestro último encuentro, muchos más desde el primero. Creo que la última vez que lo ví fue cuando había venido Hugo Chávez a Buenos Aires. En aquella ocasión dije en vos alta que el tipo me parecía un vendedor de autos usados, un chanta de siete suelas. Horacio me dijo que había que darle tiempo, David Viñas dijo que en cuanto ese tipo nos tomara el tiempo ya iba a ser demasiado tarde. David tenía razón. Lo cierto es que no volvía a verme con Horacio. La visita de Hugo Chávez marcó un antes uy después, y ese después lo encontró a Horacio junto a Néstor Kirchner y a la gente de Carta Abierta a los que nunca pude tragar. Sin embargo siempre mantuve el afecto con el que me sorprendí al conocerle una tarde en casa de León Rozitchner en la calle Pampa. Ahí nació iuna breve colaboración que, si no me equivoco fueron sus primeras en el cine documental. Dicen por acá, que "En el género documental Horacio González aportó su testimonio en películas como "Harto the Borges" (2000) y "Cortázar: apuntes para un documental" (2001), ambas de Eduardo Montes-Bradley.” Supongo que el espíritu de colaboración trasciende las desavenencias. Si en algo ayuda, el cine documental sirve por lo menos para eso.

The exemplary life of Louis Alexander Southworth Charlottesville, Va - Louis Southworth was born into slavery in 1830. He was a blacksmith, a farmer, and a fiddler raised in Tennessee and then Missouri. By the time he was brought to Oregon he was 21 and ready to dig for as much gold as it was needed to buy freedom. At Yreka and Jacksonville mining camps, he quickly learned that playing old-time music could earn him what he needed while playing the tunes he learned in the South. And so, he did. His happiness would have been complete but for one circumstance. Although a freeman first, and an outstanding member of the community for the rest of his life, Southworth was kept from going to church by the white brethren who warned him against playing the violin. The exclusion asserted an extraordinary blow to the old man, then in his late eighties, during Jim Craw and increasing racial tensions in America. Shortly before his death in June of 1917, Southworth wrote that “The brethren wouldn’t stand for my violin, which was all the company I had most o’ the time. They said it was full of all wicked things and that it belongs to the devil.” Fiddling has long been associated with the demonic in America religious communities. Almost fifty years before Southworth was expelled from his church in Oregon, Sy Guilliat was barred from his in Richmond for attempting to make music with the stroke of his bow’s horsehair against the fiddle’s strings made of cat guts. Even a hundred years before, a woman named Clarinda, born into slavery in 1730, was brought to court and accused being in communion with the Devil. The records show that folks would gather around her playing in joyous dance, “both sexes” reads the accusation, “not having the fear of God before their eyes, delighted like herself, in sinful and pernicious amusement.” In his memoires, written shortly before his death, Louis Southworth recalls being told that “Playing a fiddle is a proceeding’ wholly unbecoming’ to a Christian in the sight of the Lord.” By then, one-hundred years had passed since charges where brough up against Clarinda, and since Sy Gilliat was expel from church in Richmond. What seems to have changed in his case, is that given his stature in the community he was able to contest, and this was what he said: “I know, friends, you won’t think hard of me, and will give me the cold shoulder for lovin’ my fiddle these many years. Every man has his own way of looking at things and lovin’ them, you have your way, and I have mine; and my way is to love this old friend of mine that always pleased me and never went back on me. And I sometimes think than when you go up yonder and find my name, to your surprise, in the Big Book, you’ll meet many a fellow who remembers the old fiddler who played “Home Sweet Home”, “Dixie Land”, “Arkansas Traveler”, “Suwanee River”, and other tunes for the boys who were far away from home for the first time. “And some of the fellows will tell how the lonely, homesick boys listened to the fiddle during the long winter evenings until they forgot their troubles and slept as they had once slept under their mothers’ roofs at home. And they’ll talk after the gold excitement days when there was no society out West for men like us; when there wasn’t any Bible, and hymn books were unknown; when playin’ poker and buckin’ were the only schoolin’ a fellow ever got; when whiskey ran like water and made the Whites and Indians crazy, when men didn’t go by their right names, and didn’t care what they did; when there was no law, and the court was the man who carried the best six-shooter. When they have talked over those early days, the fellows will say: “‘Where’d we all been, and what’d we all done in the mines, but for Uncle Lou’s fiddle? It was most like church of anything we had.’ For the boys used to think the good Lord put a heap of old-time religion into my fiddle, and the old-time religion is good enough fo’ an old man who’s done some mighty hard work in 85 years. “But I forget the work I’ve done and the years I’ve lived when my bow comes down soft and gentle-like, and the fiddle seems to sing the songs of slavery days till the air grows mellow with the music and the old-time feeling comes back. It makes me hear familiar voices that are no more. “There are things a plain old man can’t tell in words, and there are feelin’s that won’t fit into common, everyday talk like mine, But when there’s plenty of rosin on the bow and the player’s feelin’ fine, and the fiddle pours out great torrents of music, he seems to hear the bob-white’s whistle and the rustlin’ of the corn. The whippoorwill and the mockin’bird come to sing for him, and he forgets what he ought not to remember, and he wants to make everybody glad – then it is that a plain man has feelin’s he can’t describe. “But he knows he’s happier and better, and his next day’s work is easier. He has a smile and a kind word for everyone he meets, and everyone has a smile and a kind word for him. The word is heavenly to that man, and his feelin’s are night on the religious. “So, my friends, I hope to keep my fiddler a little longer, ‘cause it’ll make it easier and pleasanter for me the few more days that I can stay. And if you’ll be kind to the old man and let him keep his friend, I know your pillows will be softer and your dreams will be sweeter when you lay your head down some day for the last time. “My fiddle is as dear to me as David’s harp was to him in his lonely hours. And I know the good Lord who loved David and the music of his harp won’t turn down and aged man and his old-time friend, nor will He forsake those who gave him aid in trouble. But He’ll have a smile and a kind word for them who made the road smoother for the old pilgrim, who traveled footsore and alone with his violin, with no one to care for him except the Father who loves music everywhere—the music of the waters, the music of the woods, the music of the winds, and the music of an old man’s violin.” Louis Alexander Southworth died on 23 Jun 1917 in Corvallis, Benton County, Oregon. He’s buried in Crystal Lake Cemetery. Sources The Afro-American Fiddler by Theresa Jenoure Hampshire College, 2008 Days and Deeds in the Oregon Country by John B. Horner The J.K.Gill Company, Portland Oregon, 1929 Marshall Wyatt, archive

En agosto me instalo en el estudio del escultor Daniel Chester French en Massachussetts por dos semanas. La idea es pensar en un film documental sobre su relaciono con los espacios. Al menos así surge del requerimiento inicial. Nunca se sabe. EMB El artista puede definirse por el espacio que habota, por el entorno que crea, por su lugar de trabajo, su tapera. Uno no espera encontrar al maquinista de una locomotora diesel viviendo entre rieles, pero es dificil suponer al escultor en un lugar donde no puedan habitar sus obras. Con los pintores sucede algo parecido, algo que no tiene correspondencia entre los músicos, bailarines, biólogos marinos y poetas. Estos últimos entran y salen de su lugar, no comparten espacio con la obra, con el studio. Tal vez los coleccionistas de de juegos de mesa fueran distintos, tal vez ellos vivan con sus tableros apiñados en el cuarto en el que duermen. Pero es difícil, decía, pensar que el escultor pueda vivir en un lugar que no se preste a la creación que lo consume. Pienso en Daniel Chester French, en Chesterwood, su studio de verano cerca de Concord, en Massachussetts. En esa dirección pongo proa, ahí me dirijo. Durante las dfos primeras semanas de Agosto estaré soñando el sueño de mármol, el sueño de faunos, manos, torsos y Andrómeda. El propósito es plantear la estructura de un film documental sobre el hombre monumental, escultor del Lincoln Memorial, del busto de Emerson, del Alma Matter de la Universidad de Columbia, de tanto otro espacio público iluminado por su tenacidad infinita. Al final de aquella residencia, plan en mano, me espera la tarea de traducir ese lugar al lenguaje documental, un film que nos permita descubrir al artista detrás del mármol, el bronce y la arcilla.

During the past six months I’ve been triresly looking for evidence of Black fiddlers of the past. It’s been quite an experience, and often a struggle in trying to identify a given image. Who’s that men, or those men in front of the lens? Almost no women where out there playing the fiddle at dances or celebrations. I did learn that at least two of the Snowden's girls where part of the traveling family troupe and I owe that to Howard and Judy Sacks who welcomed me at their home in Mount Vernon (Ohio) last month. But of all the images found, the one that impressed me the most was the stringband of musicians in Austin, Texas. The photo is believe to have been taken by Grace Murray Stephenson on June 19th, 1900 during a Juneteenth celebration. The 120 year old image has been retouched and enhance to use in Black Fiddlers and I believe it makes an important point concerning the fact that Juneteenth it’s been here all along, at least since the day Mr. Stephenson captured the likeness of these distinguished men in Austin.

Coming Saturday I´ll be heading South again. This time the goal is to meet and record with Iris Thompson Chapman in Mebane, hometown of her relative How Thomson, perhaps the last direct descendant in a lineage of African American fiddlers dating back to the 1700s. On my way back I will share images and videos capture on location, for now, just some basic information... About Iris Iris Thompson Chapman was born in Orange County and completed high school at Central High in Hillsborough. She matriculated to North Carolina College (now NCCU), where she earned a BA degree in English. Dr. Chapman continued her education at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC, earning both her master’s and doctorate degrees. Her experience ranged from teaching on the secondary level to professorships at various colleges and universities. Dr. Chapman’s specialty was English Composition and Rhetoric, and she also did scholarly work in African Studies and Oral History. Dr. Chapman retired from Elon University as Professor Emeritus. A short time later, she accepted an adjunct assignment at her undergraduate alma mater, North Carolina Central University, in the English Department. A few relevant highlights from her career include taking college students to Ghana, West Africa, as a coordinator of one of Elon University’s Study Abroad Programs and coordinating First Year Writing. She produced the award-winning film, The Life and Times of the Fiddler Joe Thompson. Also, she has created and presented a highly regarded workshop on the development of the Black Church and has edited a deceased friend’s memoir, Outliving Your Disease, by Sheila Alston, that related her spiritual battle against cancer. Currently, she’s working on a documentary about The Closing of a School, specifically showcasing the closing of Central High School in Hillsborough, NC, where she graduated. Dr. Chapman is still active in her community and church. She serves on the Mebane Museum Board of Directors and is now the president of Alamance Burlington Schools Closing the Achievement Gap board. She attends Green Level Christian Church in Haw River where she is past youth director and now has developed a College and Career Coaching Program for students at her church. Dr. Chapman is the daughter of George W. Thompson, Joe Thompson’s first cousin and the late Ira Belle Thompson. She resides in Mebane, with her husband, William Chapman, and they have one son, William.