How to resolve AdBlock issue? Arts & Life
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- Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS
Awards to successful applicants will range from $5,000 to $20,000, depending on the scale and budget of the proposed work, which includes materials, artist’s labor, installation needs and any necessary travel expenses. Proposals with interactive components are encouraged.
Lake County artists and Black, Indigenous and people of color, or BIPOC, are strongly urged to submit proposals; there are no geographic restrictions for applications.
All proposals must be submitted no later than 4 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 19.
Proposed art works must be made of materials that can endure the outdoors and extreme weather in a public setting.
All object-based sculptures must be securely mounted to the ground or a plinth base at the designated site; all work must be safe for pedestrian traffic.
The call for artists may be viewed on the city’s website, www.cityoflakeport.com/bid_opportunities.php.
The request for proposal includes specific application requirements and a map of the lakefront park with designated spaces for art.
In January 2020, the city of Lakeport was awarded a competitive grant from the California Department of Parks and Recreation funded by Proposition 68, the California Drought, Water, Parks, Climate, Coastal Protection and Outdoor Access for All Act of 2018. After two years of design, the project is ready for construction.
The new park consists of approximately 6.9 acres and will include, in addition to the public art, a basketball court, splash pad, skate park, concession building with restrooms, shade structures, picnic areas, fitness equipment, a pavilion, lighting, irrigation, and landscaping.
Estimated completion date is spring 2023.
For more information, contact Community Development Director Jenni Byers at 707-263-5615, Extension. 201,
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- Written by: Kwame Dawes
“Mend” is a poem of great intimacy. L. Renee, remembers her mother as the mender of garments, and as someone who had a life of rich experiences before the poet was born.
This moment of separation described in this poem is a testing and revelatory rite of passage for mother and daughter.
Her mother’s gift of precise hand-sewing is also a gift that mends whatever may seek to separate mother and daughter.
Mend
By L. Renee
My Mama had the gift of hand sewing—one perfect stitch
after another perfect stitch, eyeballing the precise length
of thread needed to repair what had ripped a gaping
hole, unmaking the whole swath of cotton-polyester fabric
she draped across her delicate boney shoulders before
a night out with my father—painting the town red
she said of those early dates when he handed her his fat
quarters hoping they would be enough to make something
beautiful like the outfits she sewed: plaid culottes with matching
vests, paisley dresses, fringed halters—she tells me this while
I watch the needle bully a ruby rivulet from her thumb, sullying
the myth of cotton without the blood, when she tries to mend
my middle-school uniform skirt, a navy pleat I never noticed
had been stretched into splitting—
American Life in Poetry does not accept unsolicited manuscripts. It is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2022 by L. Renée, “Mend” from Poetry Northwest. Poem reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2022 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Kwame Dawes, is George W. Holmes Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska.
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- Written by: Tim Riley
‘EMILY THE CRIMINAL’ RATED R
It is often said that one should write about what they know, or at least a variation of that construct. For director and screenwriter John Patton Ford, he turned a personal story into a premise for “Emily the Criminal.”
On the surface, “Emily the Criminal” is about a woman who becomes a criminal to pay her student loans. While Ford is neither a criminal nor a woman, he graduated from school with ninety-thousand dollars of debt.
The housing crisis was still doing damage, and Ford ended up delivering food and struggling to pay the interest each month. Not the principal, just the interest.
Wanting to become a filmmaker appeared to be a daunting task, and personal experience sparked the idea of making a movie about a millennial who hits the breaking point and decides to make her own rules.
Aubrey Plaza’s Emily carries not only the burden of student debt but a record of drunk driving and felony assault. Her past indiscretions prove to be a major impediment in job interviews to advancing a career.
The only job open to her is being an independent contractor delivering food to office buildings. Not exactly a reliable position with benefits and job security.
Meanwhile, she remains pals with a fellow student from art school, who is now working at a prestigious ad agency. Emily and her friend Liz (Megalyn Echikunwoke) seem to occupy two different planets.
After doing a favor for a coworker, Emily gets introduced to the shady underworld of “dummy shopper” where she can make $200 in an hour buying goods with a stolen credit card and fake ID.
Desperate for income, Emily shows up at a warehouse where the seemingly empathetic middleman Youcef (Theo Rossi) plays it straight about the risks and rewards of the criminal enterprise.
Getting a taste for the quick buck, Emily volunteers for a bigger payday. Of course, the greater the reward, the even more dangerous risk, such as conning an auto dealer with a fraudulent purchase of a luxury vehicle.
As trust between Emily and Youcef grows, a natural attraction evolves into something more personal. Though Youcef comes across as a nice guy, he’s working with some bad people like his cousin Khalil (Jonathan Avigdori), and no good can come of it.
While Emily becomes even bolder in the fraud game, she’s not quite given up on her desire to put her artistic skills to use for a white-collar job, even if her criminal past proves to be an albatross.
A telling scene is when she finally gets an interview at Liz’s company, meeting with smug agency head Alice (Gina Gershon), who offers an unpaid six-month internship as if it were the golden ticket.
To say the least, the insult of toiling for no compensation leads to the inevitable conclusion that this is a turning point for Emily realizing she may be best suited to a life of crime.
Now that she’s drawn even closer to Youcef, will Emily get more reckless? The stakes get higher, and both of them could be placed in greater jeopardy when things get sideways with Khalil and his cohorts.
“Emily the Criminal” is an intense, gripping crime thriller, and Aubrey Plaza’s fearless Emily is something to behold. Her character is not admirable but the performance is ferocious and compelling.
‘A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN’ ON AMAZON PRIME
Some familiar with the beloved 1992 film “A League of Their Own” may be taken aback by the modern approach to a story of women in baseball substituting for the men who have gone off to fight during World War II.
One of the most jarring aspects of Amazon Prime’s eight-episode series (which this reviewer has not devoured in its entirety) is contemporary jargon that is not in tune with the era.
This serialized “A League of Their Own” is also less invested in baseball than in the drama that seems driven by an agenda revealing the challenges of women competing in what was then an exclusively male sport.
Loosely based on the Geena Davis character, Abbi Jacobson’s married Carson Shaw, whose husband is in the Army, leaves her Idaho small town to the big city of Chicago for a tryout with the Rockford Peaches.
As catcher and eventually the interim coach, Carson deals with guilt as she finds herself attracted to another star player, wisecracking Greta Gill (D’Arcy Carden).
A parallel story develops with Maxine Chapman (Chante Adams), a talented Black pitcher, who is unable to overcome the overt racism that keeps her from joining the Peaches, a team with a Mexican pitcher (Roberta Colindrez) passed off as the Spanish Striker.
Carson is not the only person wrestling with guilt and same-sex attraction. Maxine’s closeted desire would surely cause a rift in her tightknit circle of family and friends.
The most compelling drama, or at least as it appears half-way through the series, is with Maxine’s family, where strong-willed matriarch Toni (Saidah Arrika Ekulona) is in a league of her own.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
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- Written by: Kwame Dawes
War, impending war and exile forced by war, are increasing preoccupations in the work of Ladan Osman — not so much the wars, but the damage that they do to everyday people who are trying to live in this world.
In “Sun to God”, these walking children and their parents, these laughing children and their parents, will eventually start to run, and will eventually stop laughing. It is a vividly captured accounting of the wars that continue to be waged around us.
Sun to God
By Ladan Osman
The children walked.
Then they began to run.
Why are we running, one asked?
No one knew. They ran faster.
They began laughing.
Why are we laughing?
Not one knew. They laughed more.
It was the eve of war but they didn’t know.
The children walked.
The children’s parents walked.
The parents’ parents walked.
Their shadows spilled ahead.
Their shadows lagged behind.
Then, they began to run.
No one was laughing.
American Life in Poetry does not accept unsolicited manuscripts. It is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2022 by Ladan Osman, “Sun to God” from The Rumpus, April 26, 2022. Poem reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2022 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Kwame Dawes, is George W. Holmes Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska.
