Sweet inspiration
Sally Wood Winslow, director of the
Center at High Falls Fine Art Gallery, didn’t care that Ben Schamberger brought
his candy table in past the recent Text
and Texture exhibit’s deadline. “We looked at it and said ‘we have to have
it,'” she says.
           The
table looks like something out of an upscale Hansel and Gretel. Schamberger built the wooden frame himself
before melting dozens of Jolly Rancher candies to its surface. Around the block
of colorful candy tiles, he hot-glued wrapped butterscotches, Mary Janes, and
caramels. He stuck licorice, chocolate coins, Andes mints, and gummy
raspberries in patterns on the table’s legs, and then covered the entire work
with varnish.
           Schamberger’s
table was put upstairs with the rest of the gallery’s exhibit, until Winslow
had an epiphany: use it as a donation table. “Ben’s piece is in the spirit of
our place,” she says.
           Schamberger’s
favorite medium is acrylic paint, but he works with media like candy if it
helps him achieve the results he wants. He calls his style “abstract
classicism” and almost always starts with an end in mind. “I’ll have a picture
in my head,” Schamberger says. “Nothing on the canvas.”
           While
he sold a small oil painting just last week, Schamberger — who often spends
several hundred dollars stocking up on paints, and spent over $200 making the
candy table — has been generous with his art in the past. “I let people take
it,” he says. “It’s kind of floating around the city in people’s houses.”
           He
keeps one of his favorites in his own apartment, though. It’s a splash painting
of Greta Garbo buying stilettos. To make a splash painting, Schamberger takes a
long paintbrush, dips it in paint, and hits it against his wrist. He also
squirts tubes of paint directly onto the canvas.
           Schamberger
has several other pieces on display right now at Roberts Wesleyan College,
where he is a senior and education major. He loves to experiment with motion,
especially when the subject is a horse. “Can you capture movement in a
two-dimensional image?” he asks. “I don’t know if you can, but I can try.”
           The Center at High Falls Fine Art
Gallery is at 60 Browns Race. 325-2414, www.centerathighfalls.org.
— Jennifer Weiss
The
enemies within
Unnamed
enemies in the Democratic Party essentially forced David Perez to resign from the Rochester City School Board, says
longtime friend Adam McFadden.
           McFadden, a city council member,
wouldn’t name names, but said it was more than one person and that these people
do not hold elected office — which rules out members of city council or
school board.
           Perez was elected to his first term
on the school board last November.
           City
Newspaper has obtained a copy of a letter Perez sent to his fellow board
members dated Sunday, March 14. In it, he writes that he owns property outside
of city limits and was temporarily living with his in-laws in the city at the
time of his inauguration in January.
           “I currently have a dual residency
situation,” he writes. “It was my intent to solidify permanent residency in the
city while maintaining said property outside of [the] city. Someone has
challenged this intent.”
           City school board members must live
in the city. McFadden says Perez decided to resign rather than fight threats to
out his residency issues.
           “It just stressed him out,” McFadden
says. “He could have easily fought… he said, ‘You know what? I don’t want to
have to deal with this. I’m going to be with my family.'”
           School Board Commissioner Rob Brown
says he had no idea Perez owned property outside the city.
What’s
up with RoCo?
It’s
probably all over town by now that the Rochester
Contemporary (RoCo) decided to eliminate its one-and-only paid position,
that of executive director, which for nearly a decade was held by Elizabeth
McDade.
           So, what does this mean for RoCo?
Well, for starters, not too much, at least according to its board. The gallery
is a mainstay in the Rochester contemporary art scene, and it only recently
relocated to its new downtown home at 137 East Avenue. The current exhibition
featuring work by Elizabeth Lyons and Mark Sawrie will continue as planned, as
will the 20th Annual Art Auction in June. But what’s in the wings after June?
           According to a news release, the
board thinks it can share McDade’s duties with an all-volunteer crew. Running
any gallery tends to involve a wide range of chores, including: contacting
artists, compiling checklists, generating labels, ordering and/or designing
announcements, mailing, fundraising, installing shows… the list goes on.
           There are other developments hinting
at changes on RoCo’s horizon: Although it’s only met a couple of times so far,
a newly formed RoCo Programming Committee could signal a hopeful new direction
for the gallery. Indeed, it was McDade who first turned us on to the
committee’s existence back in October, when we spoke with her just before
RoCo’s grand reopening.
           She remarked that people who
complain about what is or isn’t being exhibited at RoCo (all you art
curmudgeons out there know who you are) should instead get involved — either
submit your own proposals or join the committee and review the proposals of others.
—
Alex Miokovic and Heidi Nickisher
Faith
or good works
Local
religious people have been flocking to opposite
positions on same-sex marriage.
           The pro position got a boost March
18, when dozens of clergy and allies gathered downtown in support of equal
marriage-rights for all couples. The prayer breakfast, opened by the Rev.
George Tyger of First Universalist Church, released an “Interfaith
Statement” that called on the state not to “interfere with same-sex
couples who choose to marry.” The statement opposed a constitutional
amendment that would deny equal-marriage rights.
           The event featured several speakers.
Rabbi Alan Katz of Temple Sinai lamented that “this issue has brought the
realization that we religious [people] have been co-opted by the state.”
The state, he said, should not engage in “denying rights to people.”
           Theologian H. Darrell Lance said
marriage in the Bible is different than many think — it comprises polygamy,
for example. Besides, he said, the Christian Church didn’t sanctify marriage
until 1215. (This was at the Fourth Lateran Council, which dealt with matrimony
and other sacraments. The Council improved on an earlier Christian belief that
marriage was “a necessary evil,” or as St. Paul put it, “better
to marry than to burn.”)
           Opponents of same-sex marriage, said
the Rev. Clark West, an Episcopal priest, just can’t bring themselves to
countenance the fact of gay sexual activity within the relationship. Clark
challenged the idea that it’s all about the kids. Children are not an essential
part of marriage, he said, “but sex is.” He referred to the views of
Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury: “Can we see sex as a good in
itself, [something] for our mutual joy?”
           Dee Miller, a member of Downtown
United Presbyterian Church, told of her personal experience. After 22 years of
marriage to a man, the bearing of four children, a divorce, and years of being
afraid she’d be discovered and lose her kids, Miller is out and outspoken. Just
six weeks ago, she said, she and her partner traveled to Niagara Falls,
Ontario, where they were married by a Canadian Unitarian minister. She said
Niagara municipal officials were very welcoming. “Wouldn’t it have been
nice,” she mused, “if we could have gone across the street [from
DUPC] to City Hall” to get the marriage license?
           In a separate forum, clergy from the
Faith Community Alliance, a coalition of African-American congregations (Black
Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal, etc.), have spoken strongly against gay
marriage rights. The Alliance’s designated spokesperson, the Rev. Norvel Goff
Sr. of Baber AME Church, did not return calls for comment. But Alliance member
Rev. John Walker of the Christian Friendship Missionary Baptist Church,
speaking for himself, outlined the objections.
           Walker told us the Alliance opposes
gay marriage “because it is non-Christian, non-Biblical, and
unnatural.” He said marriage, as “ordained by God,” exists
primarily for the bearing of children and other traditional purposes.
           But are all gay relationships
therefore wrong? “Yes, if they’re sexual,” said Walker. “It’s
really just a sexual sin,” he said, as with fornication and incest. He
added that — though the Alliance has not taken up the question — he doesn’t
see any objection to domestic partnership benefits.
           He also noted the Alliance’s
position isn’t much different from that of the Roman Catholic Church and some
other religious institutions.
Peace
in New York
Roughly
100 Rochesterians took chartered buses to New
York City March 20 for an anti-war-and-occupation
rally marking the first anniversary of the Iraq invasion. Tom Moore, a
Metro Justice member who served as a bus captain, estimates another 200 locals
went down there by other means. He says around 100,000 took part overall.
“My bus was mostly college students,” he says. “The streets were
chock full… a lot of people expressing a lot of opinions on what this all
meant.” He adds there was good representation from every age group.
           Moore recalls hearing Rochesterian
Khury Petersen-Smith giving a speech about his experiences in a recent visit to
Iraq. (See City Newspaper, February
4, 2002, for more on Petersen-Smith and his journey.) Overall, says Moore, the
rally went very smoothly. “Everybody looked pretty calm,” he says.
“There seemed to be a peaceful feeling about the whole [event].”
           Large numbers of police were on the
streets, says Moore, but they acted with much greater restraint than police
officers did a year ago at an anti-war rally in Lower Manhattan. Mostly, he
says, “they were keeping people out of the parks.”
           Down in the District of Columbia
recently, a different anniversary message was proclaimed.
           The House of Representatives passed
a resolution that claims “the United States and the world have been made
safer with the removal of Saddam Hussein and his regime.” The resolution also
“commends the Iraqi people for their courage in the face of unspeakable
oppression” imposed by Saddam Hussein, congratulates Iraqis for adopting
an interim constitution, and applauds “the U.S. Armed Forces and Coalition
forces for liberating Iraq” and for their “valiant service.”
           No mention of perhaps 10,000 dead
Iraqi civilians or an ever-growing threat to civilians and troops everywhere.
           The House vote was 327 for, 93
against, seven voting “present,” and seven not voting. Western and
Central New York Congressmembers Boehlert, Houghton, Quinn, Reynolds, and
Slaughter all voted yes, while Maurice Hinchey voted no. Presidential candidate
Dennis Kucinich did not vote.
Funky
junk for Unk
Rock
‘n’ roll is helping out the man who helped it out in Rochester for so many
years. WCMF’s late-night cat, the late Unkle
Roger McCall, was slain in late December, leaving a huge void in the music
community and his family.
           Long-time McCall pal and Sphere
Sound Records bigwig Scott Van Dusen has rallied some of the big national
troops to raise money for the wife and son Rog left behind.
           Cheap Trick’s Tom Petersson, The
Rolling Stones’ Darryl Jones, Todd Rundgren and Kasim Sulton of Utopia, as well
as other artists and manufacturers have all donated some pretty sweet swag that
Van Dusen hopes will raise “thousands” for the family.
The “Auctions For Unk” is can be found
at www.spheresound.com. Fifty percent of the net proceeds from
all goods sold will go to McCall’s family.
Correcting
ourselves
In
his March 3 “Gut instincts” review of Infantino’s, Adam Wilcox incorrectly
implied that there was butter (a ton of it) in the restaurant’s greens and
beans. There is, in fact, no butter in the dish. Our apologies to Infantino’s
and the lactose intolerant.
This article appears in Mar 24-30, 2004.
