An illuminating and constructive workbook for anyone involved or interested in creative administration.
Socially engaged artist Lockyer edits a collection of firsthand accounts of finding, building, and sustaining a life in the creative arts.
Emerging from the National Center for Choreography-Akron’s Creative Administration Research program, this essay collection and workbook features an eclectic mix of contributors and styles, including stories, essays, case studies, and interviews. It’s divided into four distinct sections: “Place,” “Leadership,” “Capital,” and “Pathways.” Based on the title and the first entry—an entertaining essay on how to build an audience for contemporary dance in northeast Ohio, which is particularly difficult on Sundays when the Cleveland Browns play—the reader may initially assume that the accounts focus solely on that locale. However, the scope quickly broadens to include experiences from the dance scenes in Nashville, Seattle, New York state, and the San Francisco Bay Area. If there’s an overarching theme, it’s perhaps best expressed by choreographer and director Raja Feather Kelly, who writes, “In America, artists have to ask for permission to be artists.” The book offers particularly compelling advice on how to approach marketing, especially when dealing with local newspapers that may have limited understanding of, or space for, contemporary dance. An excerpt from a podcast interview by multidisciplinary artist Miguel Gutierrez is especially engaging, as it delves into the financial specifics with clear figures for each worker involved in rehearsal and production. At the end of each piece is an “Administrative Experiment,” which urges readers to think deeply on a topic or try out a new skill; however, not all are administrative in nature, as some involve dance exercises and other creative tasks. The final appendix includes a further “Investigative Retreat Toolkit,” featuring guided questions to provoke reflection and discussion—a helpful starting point for creative administrators after absorbing all the other advice. Although this workbook might have a limited audience, it provides a wealth of information, success stories, and unique insights for its target audience.
An illuminating and constructive workbook for anyone involved or interested in creative administration.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9781629222820
Page Count: 237
Publisher: University of Akron Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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