Search Results

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.

GPS Audiovisual - Buenos Aires, 15 junio, 2021 - Eduardo Montes-Bradley rueda en la ciudad de Mebane, Carolina del Norte, su documental Black Fiddlers, producción sobre músicos afroamericanos cuyas contribuciones a una identidad cultural nacional aún no han sido plenamente reconocidas. Organizado como un libro de cuentos con un hilo conductor común y unificador, navega por el espacio y el tiempo, desde las costas del Atlántico hasta el Pacífico, desde el período colonial hasta la Guerra Civil estadounidense, en busca de hombres y mujeres negros, libres y esclavizados, quienes contribuyeron con su música al paisaje sonoro musical estadounidense. El cineasta argentino radicado en Estados Unidos recogió en Mebane el testimonio de Iris Thompson Chapman. Es la ciudad natal de su pariente How Thomson, quizás el último descendiente directo de un linaje de violinistas afroamericanos que se remonta al siglo XVIII. Iris Thompson Chapman nació en el condado de Orange y completó la escuela secundaria en Central High en Hillsborough. Se matriculó en North Carolina College (ahora NCCU), donde obtuvo una licenciatura en inglés. La Dra. Chapman continuó su educación en la Universidad de Carolina del Sur en Columbia, SC, donde obtuvo tanto su maestría como su doctorado. Por otra parte, Montes-Bradley tiene un proyecto acerca de un documental sobre el reconocido escultor Daniel Chester French, recordado principalmente por su monumental estatua de Abraham Lincoln (actualmente) en el Monumento a Lincoln en Washington, uno de los fundadores de la Sociedad Nacional de Escultura y miembro de la Academia Estadounidense de las Artes y las Ciencias, la Accademia di San Luca, la Academia Estadounidense de las Artes y las Letras y de la Academia Nacional de Diseño. Desde el martes 1 de junio está disponible una nueva serie de largos y cortometrajes realizados en Argentina y Estados Unidos correspondientes al ciclo FOCO MONTES-BRADLEY, muestra retrospectiva del cineasta, ensayista y documentalista Eduardo Montes-Bradley, con la coordinación integral de la multiplataforma GPS Audiovisual. Entre las novedades se incluye el preestreno exclusivo de Alice: At Home with Alice Parker, documental de 30 minutos dirigido y filmado por Eduardo Montes-Bradley, con producción de Heritage Film Project. También volverán a exhibirse Los cuentos del timonel (2001), documental sobre Osvaldo Bayer y Le mot just – Ideografía de Héctor Tizón (2004), documental sobre el poeta jujeño. FOCO MONTES-BRADLEY es una mirada parcial a los trabajos que el cineasta realizó en Argentina, Estados Unidos, Alemania y Brasil entre 1999 y 2020. Cada dos meses incorporará producciones inéditas para la Argentina y reestrenos, que estarán disponibles durante 60 días en forma gratuita y exclusiva en la plataforma Vimeo de GPS Audiovisual.

As an artist in residency in Chesterwood, I will have a unique opportunity to explore a possible documentary film about Daniel Chester French. Donna Hassler invitation, the hospitality of her dedicated team of curatos, the proximity to Concord, and the scholarship of Daniel Preston, Michael Richman and Harold Holzer, will certainly contribute to enhance the experience and the prospect of a new documentary in time for the rededication of the Lincoln Memorial. In the coming weeks I will be sharing more about my DCF journey, a journey that promises to be unique and filled with gratifying experiences.

Black Fiddlers is a documentary film about African-American musicians whose contributions to a national cultural identity have yet to be fully recognized. Organized as a book of short stories with a common and unifying thread, Black Fiddlers navigates space and time, from the Atlantic shores to the Pacific, from the Colonial period to the American Civil War, in search of Black men and women, free and enslaved, who contributed with their music to the American musical soundscape. In eighteenth-century Richmond, Virginia, the filmmaker finds Sy Gilliat (1756-1820), AN acclaimed virtuoso enslaved to Lord Botetourt, Governor of the Virginia Colony. Gilliat performed European opera melodies and a wide variety of dance tunes for the Virginia aristocracy. However, Gilliat’s fame transcended the Governor’s mansion, and his music also filled the rooms of Richmond’s taverns and dance halls where diverse audiences would gather to hear one of the best-known musicians of the day. As our team of researchers and musicians move westward in search of other fiddlers, we find Eston and Madison Hemings in Charlottesville. They were the mixed-race children of Thomas Jefferson and the enslaved Sally Hemings. After their manumission following Jefferson’s death, Eston and Madison pioneered a musical tradition in Charlottesville that could still be glimpsed in the first performances of The David Matthews Band on West Main Street where Eston and Madison lived before moving West to Chillicothe, Ohio. It is in Ohio, however, where the musical legacy of Jefferson’s Black children still resonates loud and clear. In Mount Vernon, not far from Chillicothe, Black Fiddlers’ director Eduardo Montes-Bradley learns of the legend of The Snowden Family Band, a multigenerational clan of Black musicians. The Snowden’s talents have been recognized and celebrated in recent years through the recordings of The Carolina Chocolate Drops and Rhiannon Giddens. “It was the violin playing and not the gold” As the crew resumes the journey in search of Black fiddlers of the past, their attention is momentarily diverted to Wilmington, North Carolina, and the sounds of Old Frank Johnson’s fiddle. Old Frank enjoyed an extraordinary reputation for almost half a century, and according to some he was the James Brown of his time. Back on the road, the Black Fiddlers team hears the echoes of Lewis Alexander Southworth (1830-1917) and the sweet melodies he played to entertain gold diggers, “loose women,” and pioneers in the mining camps of Oregon. “It was the violin playing and not the gold”, he said, that ultimately paid for his freedom. Southworth was a musician, pioneer settler in the frontier, exemplary citizen, and an early champion of voting rights. Pictorial evidence of Southworth’s later years shows him dressed in a dark suit and worn dusty boots, sitting in a rocking chair and gazing at a portrait of Lincoln hanging over the mantle next to his violin. In another photograph, the bridge of his nose crinkles with a smile that extends to his eyes. He holds his violin, a dear companion and witness to the extraordinary transformations that had taken the United States from the early years of British, French, and Spanish colonialism through Emancipation following the Civil War. Black Fiddlers, narrated by Benjamin Hunter and produced in collaboration with distinguished scholars and performers, is not just a documentary, it’s a road movie aspiring to provide the first comprehensive account of America’s rich musical history as told by Black fiddlers of today.