May 22, 2010

Clocktail party gets Hour Town ticking

 Wingspread's courtyard filled with clocks; Bill Reid's Loonatick is at right

 There are many great quotations about time. Here are just three:
  • Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. ~Ambrose Bierce
  • The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. ~ Albert Einstein
  • Time is money. ~ Benjamin Franklin
    Time was much on the mind Saturday night, as a clocktail party at Wingspread -- renamed Club Wingspread for the night -- introduced the 60 artist-designed clocks that will decorate Downtown Racine this summer, our ninth public art project -- Hour Town.

    The clocks played off puns about time, quotes like Henry David Thoreau's "Time is but the stream I go fishin' in," and many of the words and phrases you can think of relating to time: the sands of time, a New York minute, fish'n time, time flies, and the White Rabbit's anguished cry from Alice in Wonderland: "I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!"

    For the most part, the clocks were brightly painted. But there were mosaics, engraved tin, ceramics, beadwork, a Frank Lloyd Wright-ish design, and a Bill Reid Loonatick. And, surprisingly enough, almost all of them showed the same time....

    Starting Monday, they'll be on display Downtown. For now, here are a few that caught my eye.

    Sandy Schmitz carved Tin to Tin's design into thin pieces of metal

    Fish In' Time, a 3-D clockface by by Robert Anderson

    Daun Johnson created Clock & Roll, this clock/bicycle combination,
    with her daughter Crystal and their neighbor, Kim Nelson.

    Here's a closeup of the intricate beadwork in Clock & Roll

    Jerry Trieber was the only artist to turn the concave clock base 
    inside-out, to create Time Flies, Cat's in the Cradle

    95 comments:

    1. at wingspread, eh?

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    2. Always at Wingspread and it's a nice reward for the artists.

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    3. This silly stuff ought to be kept out at "Whitebread" where it belongs. We don't need it in impoverished, barely-surviving downtown Racine.

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    4. I wonder if the clocks will deflect the rampant bullets flying throughout Racine. There were numerous instances last night.

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    5. How sad people are. I think the clocks look nice. Didn't think they needed a cocktail party for it. But I guess drinking involves in everything.

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    6. Nothing new here. The people who are the likely buyers of these items always get the first view. It is only for the top business and elected officials. Common folk aren't invited.

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    7. http://www.racinedowntown.com/clocktailparty.html

      With a ticket price of 125.00 - most people will not be attending this preview party. I would guess it's meant more for those who've sponsored an artist and the artists. It does seem a bit elitist in view of the "public" art nature of the project - people who can afford the ticket see everything in one place - while the public goes downtown and hopes the pieces will actually be on display outside.

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    8. http://www.racinedowntown.com/clocktailparty.html

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    9. Do the whiners realize this is a fundraiser? If some people will pay $125 to see something that we all can see for free two days later, what's your problem?

      Pete and Dustin maybe you could do a follow up article on all the things that the money from these public art events has gone to.

      And no, whiners I don't work for SCJ or DRC. I'm just a middle class working gal who enjoys seeing something new and different and money being raised for good causes.

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    10. Based on a poll conducted in my neighborhood, I'd say that the elitist "Clocktail Party" tioked off nine out of eleven residents. Only one approved of the pretentious gathering while another neighbor said that since art was a frivolous subject, he'd waste no time on it.

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    11. Dear 1:59 PM, WHAT "GOOD CAUSES" BENEFIT FROM THAT INANE PARTY? If the Witches of Waxilla were to send the dough to HALO or the Food Bank, there'd be some point to it. Alas, knowing Miz Yellin' and her Auntie Uncaring, the cash will go for more arty-tarty trash. Somebody should tell those Marie Antoinette Fan Club hell-hags that there's a depression and that their victims are tired of art as a substitute for heart in the Infernal City.

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    12. If the gangbangers use those tarted-up tick-tock toys for target practice, my neighbors and I won't be surprised. Needed: bullet-proof vests and riot gear for our RPD. That stuff will be a lot more useful than the crafty crap sponsored by a certain flighty flock of silly got-loot geese and lucre-loons.

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    13. Dear 2:26 PM, The word "tioked" in the second line should be corrected to "ticked." (I'm pretty sure you had a typo there.) Errors aside, I'd have to agree with you. Here in my neck of the woods, five out of six neighbors thought that the clocks and their coming-out party were ridiculous. Even the gal who enjoyed the clocks didn't approve of the pricey gala.

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    14. Ditto in my community, a place where seven out of eight intensely disliked the dolled-up clocks and their debut. Here, too, the individual who admired the timepieces had no use for the party.

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    15. Clocktail party? We all know which lucre-laden lushes think that every day is BOOZEDAY!

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    16. Great event - we need more of these. 9:11 - sounds like most of your friends are losers like you. Can't wait until next year.

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    17. He who laughs last, laughs best. The day will come when the elitist sponsors of the "Clocktail Party" will join Marie Antoinette in history's roadkill repository.

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    18. 10:00 Give me the date and time - I'll put it on my calendar. I hope it does not conflict with one of these fun events!

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    19. Life is full of choices folks. You can choose to see the glass half full or half empty, your choice. You can choose to pay the $125 or stay home and pout because you don't have any money. Or you can choose to ignore those who are having fun and enjoying artistic endeavors.

      You can choose to join society or be an anarchist as many of you are here. Good thing we live in a free country where choice is still an option.

      It's amazing how the glass becomes full up when you get off your dead ass and start living!

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    20. Dear 2:55 PM, The poor, whom you revile, have already gotten off what you termed their dead asses in order to work too darned hard for too darned little while you and your fellow-eliteniks cavorted at "Whitebread." As for artistic endeavors, most of the stuff pushed by the rich Witches of Waxilla is really craftsy crap designed to keep hyperprivileged parasites from experiencing boredom. (As a historian, I can tell you that oligarchies headed for history's landfill adore and support gimmicky "art" as part of their never-ending war against ennui. Right before the French Revolution put Marie Antoinette and her clique out of business, they just had to have stuffed mice and gilded beetles to play with during their largely-idle days. Later on, Czar Nicholas II and his tribe of degener-twits needed cleverly-designed solid gold toys manufactured by Faberge to while away their tedious hours. By and large, a ruling class' fixation on folly and outrageous art is a sure sign that it is ripe for removal.

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    21. Dear 5/24/2010 2:55 PM, For your sake, I hope you never have to work for a living. In case you don't know it, the folks whom you accuse of laziness put in sixty-hour weeks doing chimp chores for chump change. Please grow a heart and a brain!

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    22. Dear 7:03 AM, You forgot the parenthesis mark at the end of your comment. Punctuation aside, your historical information is accurate. Immediately anterior to the Revolutions of 1848, the French elite and the Austrian aristocracy indulged in extremely lavish entertaining in order to display their elaborately-decorated fans. In 1910, the Mexican oligarchy grooved on French paintings and Beaux Arts architecture while ignoring the misery of its victims. By the end of 1910, Mexico's erstwhile leaders were in exile. I won't be tedious and trot out additional examples--any researcher can find them by the proverbial carload. The bottom line is that high-and-mighty privileged classes put themselves at risk whenever they focus on non-essentials. Show me an arty elite and I'll start looking for a competent historian to write its obituary.

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    23. Based on the stuff it subsidizes and collects, I'd give The House of Wax a decade at most. Expenditure on dead bug dioramas and architectural follies such as Fancy Sleaza Mall indicate that the end is drawing nigh.

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    24. Pray that the destroyers of corporate capitalism may use peaceful and political methods ONLY.

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    25. Since most avant-garde art is just a plaything to help the kleptoplutocrats keep boredom at bay, it possesses little lasting value. If the kleptoplutocrats here want to do something worthwhile, they can devote some of their otherwise-idle hours to philanthropy or go out and get REAL jobs!

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    26. Instead of clocks, the artists should have decorated riot shields. If the economy doesn't improve a.s.a.p., our RPD may need them.

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    27. 2:55 - you said "In case you don't know it, the folks whom you accuse of laziness put in sixty-hour weeks doing chimp chores for chump change." Give me some examples and then we can decide if these individuals did anything in their life to earn a better job and wage. and as a note, if you work in corporate America these days, you are expected to work 60 hrs a week and no more money than 40 hrs. So quit whining as usual.

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    28. I doubt that the execu-swine whom you admire and with whom you identify put in sixty hour work weeks. All the high-income hoggies I know do as little as possible and dump their tedious tasks on middle or lower-echelon salary serfs. By the way, if you'll check other developed countries' labor laws, most advanced nations cap the work week at forty or thirty-eight hours. If it weren't for the greed and heartless arrogance of our kleptoplutocrats, American workers could enjoy the same sane, humane conditions. Instead we allow a handful of oligarchic cruds to grind our people into the muck so they may acquire more non-essentials such as modern art.

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    29. When Nic Noblique said that art was whatever he could get away with, he let the raunchy rat out of the bag. On the whole, Modern Art is a gigantic racket. Perhaps it's no accident that "Hour Town" is the brainchild of The Sons of Scam.

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    30. 11:19 - Give us specific names of these individuals.

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    31. If you're such a corporate hotshot, you'll be able to find plenty of overworked and underpaid wage slaves--just take a gander at some of your own downtrodden drudges.

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    32. Another good place to encounter our system's victims is the Work Force Development Center. There you'll be able to interview scads of exploited toilers.

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    33. Returning to our original topic, Racine neither needs nor wants community art projects. Had the Witches of Waxilla possessed hearts, this nonsense would have ended years ago.

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    34. Better yet, these ditzy dollar-sign dynasty dames never would have started their nonsense in the first place.

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    35. 5:15 - Answer the question - always accusations and no proof. Proof or shut up.

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    36. Just take a look at your own wage slaves, Pal, and you'll find plenty of overworked and underpaid victims of the system.

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    37. None here - your "Pal".

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    38. Trust me--if you've got the cash and leisure for romps at "Whitebread," you've probably exploited plenty of wage slaves. Get real!

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    39. 9:39 - poor baby! You are such a whiner. If you don't like how it is, get out and do something about it rather than whine on this board. Oh, that's right it's someone elses fault that does not allow you too.

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    40. We're doing plenty to change the system using peaceful and legal methods. However, elitists who mislabel reformers as whiners are part of the problem instead of the solution.

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    41. Wow! These are INCREDIBLE! The artwork is more amazing every year! I can't wait to see all of them! I wish you had more photos to share!

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    42. A generation or so from now, our history books will overflow with photos of gimmicky "community art" projects ground out by wage slaves and salary serfs to keep their oligarchic masters from experiencing ennui. Like Marie Antoinette, the Count of Artois and Prince Metternich, Racine's eliteniks can't bear to be bored. By and large, a hyper-privileged class' obsession with outrageous eye candy is a sign that its reign of error is drawing nigh. Whenever we encounter an arty aristocracy, we'd better find a competent historian to conduct its post mortem and compose its autopsy report.

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    43. My friend (who is an artist and a college student, working to pay her own way through), and I love to walk along Racine's downtown streets during the summer and admire the creativity and effort put into each piece of art.

      Creating art can be very healing and can help people let go of their anger and other harmful emotions. Art is used in therapy and is especially helpful when working with a child who has experienced trauma.

      Many adults who work, just to put food on their family's table, enjoy using whatever "free" time they have to create art rather than watch TV or go to the bar. With all the stress put on individuals in today's society, we should never deny each other of expressing ourselves in a creative manner and for others to become inspired and intrigued by another's creativity seen on display.

      RacineGirl <3's Downtown Art

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    44. Although interest in aesthetics isn't intrinsically decadent, a fixation on beauty to the detriment of attention to duty most definitely announces the beginning of the end. Right before World War I terminated Europe's Belle Epoque, society's grandes dames had to prance around with gold-encrusted gem-studded Goliath beetles pinned to their silk-swathed bosoms. Anyone who's examined the dead roach dioramas at a certain art museum will give the wealthy Waxclan at most an additional decade of frivolity prior to its inevitable fall. (A safe rule of thumb is to shun alliances with any kleptoplutocrats whose favorite art objects would make a heterosexual man's skin creep.)

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    45. One of the standard case histories illustrating the abovementioned rule is the fall of the Spanish monarchy during the reign of King Carlos Segundo (1665-1700). Although His Majesty couldn't pay his soldiers on time, he could locate cash galore to remunerate female sculptors (e.g. Luisa Roldan), who filled Spain's churches with kitschy Madonnas adorned with rock crystal tears. When King Carlos died loaded with art but bereft of ready cash, France and Austria plunged Europe into more than a decade of chaos and carnage known today as the War of the Spanish Succession. After the slaughter, Spain wound up with a French royal dynasty (the Bourbons) and an increasingly-foreign born military officer corps and civil service. Since the Spanish-descended colonists in the New World didn't like the Gallic viceroys and other rulers the Bourbons inflicted on them, they started to demand their independence. The rest, as any teacher will tell you, was history. Pretty soon, the colonists cut back on their tribute to the crown and viceroys had a tough time collecting taxes for the Bourbons. In some viceroyalties (e.g. New Spain/Mexico and Central America), the colonists flagrantly disobeyed the Bourbons' laws and mocked their decrees. By the mid-eighteen twenties, most of Spain's colonies had attained recognition as nations in their own right. (The few remaining Spanish colonies in the Western Hemisphere severed ties with the Bourbons following the Spanish American War.) Today Spain is a shadow of its former self. Verbum sapientibus...

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    46. 11:22 - Who cares. Go Away!

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    47. I'm just an average Racine resident who worked for 33 years plus and is very modestly retired and now finally has time to make art instead of squeezing it in at the end of a long day. There is a thriving art community in Racine which isn't elitist and is welcoming to all who are interested. I'm most familiar with the Racine Art Guild which is open to all for a ridiculously low $20.00 a year membership. The Art Guild's "Art Squared" event will debut at The Starving Artists' Fair August 1. This no-admission fair is a long-time Racine tradition initiated by the Art Guild where affordable, original art is offered. The proceeds from the Starving Artists' Fair go right back into the community in scholarships for Racine art majors, supplies, materials, and scholarships for classes at Wustum Museum, and financial support for other art groups, and art endeavors in town. All of the proceeds from the "Art Squared" event, Food for the HeART, will go to the food bank in Racine. There are groups promoting the arts in theater, music, poetry, photography, and more. Racine residents also support, through their attendance in classes and donations of time, The Spectrum School of the Arts in the DeKoven Center. There are many home studios, studio "communes," and galleries throughout Racine. Anyone that has a desire can make art, and, with materials as lowly and inexpensive as Crayola crayons and cereal boxes. Art in its many forms nurtures the soul. All this in a community that doesn't want art? I don't think so.

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    48. Dear Kate, The type of art which outrages the common man has nothing to do with you and your good friends. None of my Watchmen would ever condemn the hobbies and serious artistic endeavors you enumerated. No, the art which enfuriates socio-economic reformers is the corporately-subsidized gimmickry ground out by genteel lackeys to titillate the Waxwitches while keeping ennui out of their hyperprivileged lives.

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    49. socio-economic reformers, corporately-subsidized gimmickry, genteel lackeys to titillate the Waxwitches, hyperprivileged lives

      Kate - This guy is a sad depressing fellow who has never had a positive thought in his head. These are the kind of individuals who need to be kept down in their miserable place. Hopefully they will stay in their dark hole of a life.

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    50. What is the definition of "common man?" I thought I would fit that profile, but maybe not, since I'm not outraged by community art events even if they do have corporate backing. I did a cat and a bear and truly enjoyed the challenge. Never did I feel I was a pawn in some great game even though back then the artists were asked to pay to go to the reception. Last year the Art Guild took flack in this very same forum after an article highlighting the 2009 Art Squared event appeared. There was no corporate sponsorship whatsoever, just hardworking artists hoping to promote the arts as enrichment in our community. Life is all about choices, and we are free to make them. Isn't that something to be cherished? Life isn't fair. Some are rich in material things and some are not, but we all have the gift of life to do with as best we can with the Lord's help and blessing. Some do a better job at living than others no matter what the bottom line. Personally, I don't think a nice community art event like the Hour Town is enough to lift anyone's ennui. And, there is no place for name-calling in serious discussion. It only disgusts those with whom you want to communicate.

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    51. Kate - he is disgusting, so let him go!

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    52. No, he's just telling the truth--as he sees it--about this corrupt company town. The visitors who equate Racine with Stepford and deplore the proliferation of corporate-sponsored art are only being honest. Here's hoping that the Waxclan will call a halt to community art projects and start helping capitalism's victims for a change!

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    53. Ha, Ha, Ha - get a life you poor victim!

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    54. I already have a life, which I have dedicated to the non-violent struggle for socio-economic justice in this sad land. As for poor victims, I give them practical aid as well as information enabling them to resist the filthy system. May heart supplant art a.s.a.p.!

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    55. Dear Kate, If you haven't felt like a pawn in the elite's evil game, you're either exceptionally secure or naive. Most of my friends and acquaintances know all-too-well what the money-masters think of them and how few opportunities exist for the common man and his even less-fortunate consort, the common woman. By the way, the anti-aesthetic views of our local revolutionaries are no fluke. As any historian will inform you, insurrectionaries smash art objects because every superbly-curated or cherished item of that ilk tells the common man that the privileged classes value things more than they care about the health, happiness and well-being of disadvantaged people. (At my doctoral Alma Mater, Professor Leo Steinberg taught us future art historians that the rebellious poor routinely destroy works of art because the oligarchy dotes on eye candy while denying the common man his fair share of bread.)

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    56. If you want to read about corrupt arty oligarchs and their crimes against humanity, read Adam Zamoyski's "Rites of Peace" or David King's "Vienna, 1814." Both books will tell you plenty about Early Modern Europe's aesthetically-obsessed elite and the mega-mess it inflicted on our species at the Congress of Vienna. (As any political scientist will concede, we're still coping with the karma which a pack of arty diplomatic dilettantes left as their vile legacy.)

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    57. Years ago, at Horlick High, a fine history teacher (Mr. Ohde) said that if the arty statesmen assembled at the Congress of Vienna had thrown fewer parties and had tossed more nonsense out the window, our species could have avoided two World Wars. Someday, historians may hand down a similar verdict on the art-and-architecture-obsessed Waxclan by stating that if it had cared more about the community and less about community art projects, it would not have created an unsustainable economic system doomed to perish in our century's greatest conflict--the Class Clash.

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    58. Let us pray that the Class Clash may be devoid of violence. May both sides use peaceful, legal and political methods ONLY.

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    59. Mr. Angry - 1. wait until someone comments before you respond to your own postings and 2. you need some new friends - you are all poooooor victims and always will be based on your priorities.

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    60. Who the heck is Mr. Angry? We're just guys who are smart enough to hate the system and the corporate leeches who run it for their exclusive fun and profit.

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    61. In any event, he who laughs last, laughs best. When art departs, museums close and gated estates morph into veterans' homes, don't say that nobody warned you.

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    62. Coming sooner than the oligarchy may care to think: social justice eminent domain.

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    63. You two Mr. Angry's are so sad - you are not worth the time. I am done with you - You are dismissed!

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    64. Who are you to dismiss anyone? The day may come when MEN will teach your class respect for the rest of humanity. Consider yourself fortunate if these MEN and their regime permit you to retain some of your loot.

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    65. As a historian, there's one thing I can tell you--once the common man establishes a people's government here, arty-tarty nonsense will be a thing of the past. Enjoy your silly clocks while you may. Time is running out for folly and the class which promotes it.

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    66. I'm just wondering what the "art historian" person and the "common man" person do besides posting to work on changes in a productive way. I haven't read this blog enough to know who's who. Maybe it's the same person. The times in the past I did read posts like this, I came away sad and discouraged; everything was so negative and the posts were so verbally abusive I didn't care to read any more.

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    67. Kate - Mr. Angry is a sad and negative person. Actually there are two Mr. Angry's. They are both very pathetic individuals - that is why I dismissed them.

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    68. With all due respect, the men whom you term "very pathetic individuals" are realists. Anyone who knows what Racine actually is (a corrupt company town) will tell you the same thing.

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    69. Dear Kate, Even though it may fail to amuse you, the truth about Racine won't vanish into the cosmic void or morph into light entertainment. Facts are facts. Alas, the facts anent The Rodent City's double-digit unemployment rate can't be denied. Ditto the data anent Racine's high school dropout rate, truancy rate and minority infant mortality rate. Any way you look at this toadish town, Racine is a pathological and pathogenic poverty pit. (Incidentally, please accept my apologies if my language has offended you. Because we Watchmen maintain that direct speech must trump diplomatic flummery, our comments can be blunt. Thank you very much!)

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    70. Dear 6/1/12:57 PM, There's a spelling error in your comment. "Enfuriates" should be "infuriates." Nevertheless, you're right on target where art is concerned. Historically speaking, the rich have encouraged educated rank-and-filers to tinker with art because aesthetic hobbies distract capitalism's victims from resisting and confronting their oppressors. When art is on a community's agenda, the energy that would have been invested in fighting the system winds up wasted on pricey playthings. The arty-tarty atmosphere of this rotten-to-the-core company town is no accident.

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    71. Alas, you're correct. Down through recorded history, art and architecture (upper class follies) have been misused to con ordinary people--who'd normally rebel against their exploiters--into identifying with the elite. That's why King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette could find the funds to finance art-related education for commoners while skimping on cash for vocational training. (By the way, their little scam didn't always work as planned. Although the putrid privileged pair did get some loyal subjects and artists as a result of their scheme, one of their erstwhile scholarship winners--Jacques Louis David--wound up as an ardent supporter of the French Revolution.)

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    72. In addition, art has been employed by the elite to estrange the semi-solvent middle classes from the poor. (This procedure is part of the oligarchy's age-old "divide and conquer" strategem.) By encouraging the bourgeoisie to scorn the "coarse," non-arty wage slaves, the kleptoplutocrats have kept their victims from uniting across class barriers and organizing to overthrow the status quo. The excessive emphasis on aesthetics in Racine is no fluke of fate. Under King Carlos Segundo (reigned 1665-1700), the Spanish middle class and petty nobility received exhortations galore to cherish the arts and grind out pro-government poetry while scorning the peasantry. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Habsburg-dominated Austria's middle class and lesser nobility tinkered with art and attended government-sponsored public balls which prevented them from understanding their situation, bonding with their fellow-victims and changing the system. (When the Austrian burghers and untitled nobles finally learned how they'd been conned, they temporarily joined the workers in their struggle against tyranny. The results of their efforts were the Revolutions of 1848 which convulsed most of Central Europe and the fall of the Metternich dictatorship.) I could bore you with additional examples, but I won't inflict them on you. Just ask any historian or cultural anthropologist about the divisive role of art as a weapon wielded by the hyperprivileged classes to confuse and exploit the rest of society.

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    73. If you want to read excellent studies of art as an oligarchic instrument of oppression, get Roy Strong's "Art and Power" as well as "The Cult of Elizabeth." To anyone who thinks that art is harmless fun or an innocuous form of creativity, the above books will be eye-and-mind-openers.

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    74. With all due respect to the suffering peons in Latin lands "South of the Border." they, too, have been victims of clever elitist art-pushers. Those who doubt this statement should read Linda A. Curcio-Nagy's "The Great Festivals of Colonial Mexico City: Performing Power and Identity." Assuming readers would like a more modern perspective on the sorry subject, Mary Jane Gagnier de Mendoza's "Oaxaca Celebration" will wise them up protisimo. For those who aren't bibliophiles and don't dread doing fieldwork, interviewing folks fresh from Mexico can be extremely educational. Down in Southern Mexico's small towns, the constant pressure to fund fiestas and craft handmade decorations for them keeps the farm workers and their urban cousins poor and distracted from challenging and changing the system. Just when an industrious fellow gets a wee bit ahead and saves a modest sum, he'll be nominated by petty Poobahs in the pay of the elite to finance a float or a pyrotechnical display. If our thrifty man refuses to see several years of toil literally go up in smoke, he and his family will be bullied, beaten or--on occasion--shot. Often the only way out of subsidizing eye candy and sinking back into poverty is relocation to a large city.

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    75. The same situation prevails in rural India. There the upkeep of local temples and compulsory participation in festivals promoted by the elite keep the common people down. Worse yet, the pricey aesthetic accessories required whenever a family marries off a daughter can bankrupt that clan and mire it in debt for years. Tragically, these sick traditions perpetuated by the local leaders render the rearing of daughters so economically-prohibitive that many rank-and-filers muder them at birth, starve them to death or sell them to the pimps who run India's notorious baby brothels.

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    76. No, the proliferation of arty events and festivals in Racine didn't occur by chance. Alas, elites possess a long record of using the arts and participation in celebrations to distract, delude and dominate the common man.

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    77. Somebody please tell Miz Hellwitch, Miz Uncarin' and the Mighty Moo-Cow Matriarch that there's a depression out there destroying the hopes, dreams and lives of the poor. Until it's over and all our citizens have been freed from poverty, art must yield to heart.

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    78. Memo to the Waxbabes and their Ivy League lackeys: when the people's government turns your cushy compounds and "Whitebread" into veterans' homes, don't say that no one warned you.

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    79. Dear RacineGirl, When you stated that art helps people get rid of anger, you put your finger on one of the reasons why the oppressors of humanity keep it around: art's role in distracting capitalism's victims from venting their rage on their exploiters. As long as lower-middle class salary serfs and wage slaves pour their emotions into artsy-craftsy hobbies, that energy won't be invested in overthrowing and punishing the oligarchy. As for your notion that anger is ipso facto a harmful emotion, forget it. If the oppressed focus their ire on the corporate cruds and harness it to smash the status quo, anger can promote social justice.

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    80. Dear Kate, A few days ago you said that life wasn't and isn't fair. Alas, that's what the hyperprivileged classes want us to believe and accept as a law of the universe. When we go along with their philosophy, we wind up endorsing the oligarchs' evil system. Although we may not be able to achieve absolute socio-economic equality, we can fight the system and make life much fairer than it presently and unpleasantly is for millions of our fellow men.

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    81. Meanwhile, as long as art remains a weapon of the oligarchy in its campaign to control the rest of us, corporately-sponsored community art projects will be part of the problem rather than the solution.

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    82. Dear 6/08/2010 12:05 PM, There's a spelling error in your comment: "muder" ought to be "murder." Orthography aside, you're right about the role of art and festivals in keeping India's poor dumb and down behind rich clowns. Ask any OXFAM or Peace Corps volunteer who's served a stint in the Subcontinent. A steady stream of celebrations and the need to make or purchase decorations for such events guarantee that rank-and-filers will sink into debt and remain mired there for the duration. The interest of the Bania Caste (moneylenders) in promoting festivals is notorious.

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    83. In general, nations where the ordinary people are protected from poverty and enjoy a decent standard of living (e.g. Sweden or Canada) aren't obsessed with festivals. Conversely, countries whose workers struggle for survival (e.g. India or Mexico) have calendars loaded with religious and secular celebrations.

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    84. To any cultural anthropologist who knows what he's looking at, Racine's mad round of festivals is an obscenity proclaiming The Dumbbell City's status as a corrupt, poverty-ridden company town.

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    85. Amen! When my friends from out-of-town still visited Racine and beheld the juxtaposition of gimmicky art with grim "For Sale" signs, they wrote off this place as a bastion of corporate corruption, cruelty and craziness. (Nowadays, if I want to see my pals, I have to travel to their hometowns or meet them in Chicago. Under no circumstances will they spend time or money in what they term a "creepy city" or "New Stepford.")

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    86. Regardless of its subject matter or theme, community art tells any visitor that he's in a regimented place inhabited by docile, downtrodden and defeated drudges. Phrases such as "corporate control" and "company town" come to mind.

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    87. If the Waxclan and its Ivy League flunkeys don't want Racine to be perceived as a sick joke and an indictment of their manipulative mismanagement, they'll call a halt to their authoritarian community art projects.

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    88. Amen! Anyone who doubts that art has been a tool misused by the oligarchy to bamboozle the masses should read Roy Strong's "The Cult of Elizabeth" and "Gloriana." In those volumes the reader will find plenty of material illustrating the ways and means whereby England's Queen Elizabeth I and her Royal Council employed the arts to fox their subjects into blindly obeying Her Majesty's Government. If feminist readers want to read a woman's opinion of Elizabeth's little arty-tarty scams, they should read Frances Yates' "Astraea." (Inasmuch as our Unified School District funds an annual pseudo-Elizabethan "Madrigal Dinner," the teacher in charge of the pricey farce ought to consult the above-mentioned studies of art as an instrument of oppression.)

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    89. Returning to the local dollar-sign dynasty, the Waxies should stop inflicting their elitist agenda on people who can barely survive. A moratorium on foreclosures courtesy of the Baroness of Bugspray Bank would do more good than all the community art in the cosmos.

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    90. Coming sooner than Miz Yellin' may care to think: wealth caps, social justice eminent domain and the abolition of generation-skipping trusts. With less wealth and idle time available for nonsense, the kleptoplutocrats will cease cramming corporate community art projects down the common man's throat and concentrate on practical endeavors. Who knows? Perhaps our ceraceous scamsters may even do a little charity work!

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    91. It's about time!

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    92. Alas, Racine is so loaded with oligarchic nonsense that it merits the following acronym: Raunchy, Aberrated, Completely-Insane, Noxious Environment!

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    93. AMEN (Astute Militants Excoriating Nonsense)!

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    94. How about another acronym for RACINE? Richies' Artsy-Craftsy, Inanely-Nasty Enclave.

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    95. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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