Metroland - RIP?

Today marks the third Thursday without a Metroland since the alt weekly's office was seized by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance for unpaid tax bills, and the feeling that it will never publish again is sinking in. (You can read the details in this Times Union article by Paul Grondahl.) Along with thousands of other individuals and hundreds of businesses, I miss it already.

My own connections to Metroland  are many and deep - it was founded 38 years ago by my niece Amy's other uncle, Peter Iselin, a very talented musician whose disco-inspired venture into publishing lasted a surprisingly long time. But Peter was never great at the business end of the deal, and thefre was visible evidence of that early on.

My own favorite recollection from the middle 1980s featured weekly sprints by staffers from the Metroland offices at 4 Central Avenue to cash their paychecks at the bank up the street before the account ran dry. I had a front-row seat to this competition from my shop window on Washington Avenue, and always enjoyed the show.

Things got a little better when Steve Leon took the helm. I freelanced for the paper under Steve in three stints totaling seven or eight years spread over three decades, initially as a photographer and then mainly as a writer, covering a variety of subjects including art (no surprise) and professional basketball (in the heyday of the Albany Patroons).

The rates for freelancers were pretty generous, and I always got paid, though it sometimes took a while. But then the pay lag began to stretch too far, so I asked for a meeting with Steve to clarify my need to get paid timely enough to cover my rent. That's when he showed me a ledger that revealed 120-day accounts payable for advertising that totaled a quarter of a million dollars. This was about 10 years ago - before the Great Recession stepped up and began wiping out newspapers all over the country.

After I quit the paper for the last time, I learned from other freelancers who had hung on that Metroland's debt to them had extended well beyond a year and had mounted into the thousands of dollars for many individuals. To me, this was unforgivable - the paper was essentially floating an interest-free loan on the backs of struggling journalists - yet I still eagerly grabbed and read it every week. Except, of course, in those weeks when it didn't get distributed because the delivery people were also fed up with waiting for their money.

So, when this month's news revealed the paper's tax problems with the state, I couldn't have been less surprised. Also, it rang another personal bell - I worked as a state tax collector from 2012-14. And, from that experience, I could guess that Metroland was buried in debt to the IRS as well, not to mention imaginable lines of other creditors. In another small twist for me, I also learned that another former employer of mine (The Daily Gazette, where I worked for 13 years as an editor) might have wanted to buy Metroland if the debts could have been cleared up.

Now it seems that one possibility is lost, and it's a loss for all of us. Metroland - thanks for a really great run.

Fence 50 at ACCR: Democracy in Action

Fence 50 installation view - Photos provided by the Arts Center of the Capital Region

It's been 50 years, and the Fence Show is still going strong at The Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy. I can remember in the early '80s hanging the works on the spikes of the wrought-iron fence that gave the show its name, and it retains the wide-open feeling it had then of being a show for the people.

This year's edition attracted 382 entries from a total of 237 artists, 40 of which were submitted by 33 K-12 students, and as is the tradition, all are on display in a jam-packed salon presentation (as seen in the photo above) through June 27. Such clutter would require a stepladder - and a lot of time - to properly peruse, but that's what juror Julie Lohnes (curator of Union College's collections and Mandeville Gallery) must have done in order to choose works for the Fence Select edition of the show and designate the prizes.

A detail of Fence 50

Such a democratic enterprise has its pluses and its minuses. The only requirement for inclusion is membership in the ACCR; it appears submissions were limited to two per artist, and I'm guessing there was a size limit - but otherwise, if you brought it, it got in. The result: Everybody gets to participate (yay!) but a fair amount of truly awful work is thereby presented, and even the best work pretty much gets overwhelmed by the swirling mass of media in the show (see examples immediately above and below).

Then again, if you like to keep up with the local art scene, this affords a chance for a broad overview of it, and provides a rare opportunity to see everything that was submitted along with the juror's choices (they are denoted with a little card, visible in the photo above). This can be a fun exercise, and I guarantee every visitor will not agree with all the juror's choices of what to include or exclude.

A detail of Fence 50

My own thoughts ran naturally to second-guessing Lohnes' process, as at first I scratched my head over how few works she had tagged for Fence Select (by my count - not including the students - she picked 42 works by 32 artists out of 342 submitted by 204 artists; fewer than 13% of the entries and 16% of the artists made the cut). Man, I thought, that's harsh! But after a while, the reality began to sink in of just how much mediocre stuff was there to troll through, and I was eventually nodding in appreciation of Lohnes' careful culling.

That said, as always, some excellent work seen here will not be in Fence Select, such as a haunting black-and-white self-portrait by oft-included painter John Hampshire; two fine small photographs by Dale Winsor; and Sara Pruiksma's quirky mixed-media confections. But, overall, Lohnes got it right - choosing a good variety of media (submissions ranged from functional to conceptual in all materials) and maintaining a high level of quality. I noticed she chose a lot of graphic media (photographs and prints make up more than a third of the selected works), many rather small-scaled pieces, and not much three-dimensional work, leading me to worry that Fence Select will be too sparse.

Still, it will be intriguing to return and see how the Select edition fills the gallery and to enjoy the works in it with some breathing room. That show runs July 18 through Aug. 29, along with a solo show by last year's Fence winner Marilee Sousie. This year's prize winners are photographer Ray Felix (Best in Show) and painter Catherine Chwazik (Runner-up). The students will also be represented in a select edition of 10 works by 10 artists, including top prize winner Eliza Henneberry and runner-up Nora Kane.

Fence 50 installation view - Photos provided by the Arts Center of the Capital Region

Media Watch: Metroland needs a critic

You may have noticed that Metroland, the Capital Region's alternative newsweekly, is advertising for a freelance art critic. Though the paper lists three art critics on its masthead, it seems none is currently writing there.

I mention this in the hope that a Get Visual reader who has not seen the ads in Metroland becomes interested in contributing reviews to that publication. Without a Metroland art critic, our local media coverage is lacking an important facet. My own past experience writing reviews for that paper (in two or three stints totaling six or eight years) is that it provides a wide-open opportunity to cover shows as the writer sees fit.

Ideally, someone qualified and interesting will get on board and publish regularly.

Any takers?

Media Watch (EMPAC show)

I try to pick up a Metroland (the Capital Region's alternative newsweekly) every Thursday, scanning the table of contents first to see if there's anything on visual art, but the last few months I've been left mostly disappointed in that regard. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that the current issue carries a review by Nadine Wasserman of the exhibition Uncertain Spectator at EMPAC in Troy.

Then, this morning, I found a feature article by Tom Keyser about the same show in the Times Union's "Unwind" section. So, needless to say, I'll be getting over to EMPAC ASAP to see what all the excitement's about, and I'm very much looking forward to the experience. True confession: It will be the first time I've ever been inside the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center.

So, you can plan to read about my perspective on Uncertain Spectator in a pending post (the venue will be closed from Dec. 23-Jan. 2, so I'll probably wait till after that to publish a review). In the meantime, I hope all of you have a fun run at the Christmas and New Year's holidays. And please look here soon for a 2010 year-in-review as well.

-db

Notes from all over

ADVERTISING
I would love to have been in on the meeting that determined the language on the I-90 billboard advertising the current show at the Clark Art Institute. It says "This summer - Georgia O'Keeffe," with no mention of poor Arthur Dove (the show itself is called Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of Influence).

Now, I understand that these are hard times for museums, and that summer is their best chance to rake in as much box-office as they can (especially the Clark, where admission is free in the off-season). I also understand that for every person who's heard of Dove there are probably 10,000 who've heard of O'Keeffe. But I'd like to think that a two-person show could be advertised as such and still draw viewers. Silly me! Clearly, the PR people making decisions for the Clark know on which side their bread is buttered.

BTW, watch this space for a review of the Dove/O'Keeffe show, to be posted on Aug. 10.

MUSIC
I ran into the incomparable chanteuse Jill Hughes on Sunday at the Salsa Celtica show in Schenectady's Central Park (big shout-out to Mona Golub for her 20 years of service to the global music-loving community), and she told me she is working on a new solo CD, set to come out at a release party at the Van Dyck in September.

The last time I heard Jill sing was a few years back, on the stage with the Funk Brothers at Albany's Washington Park, and she totally belonged up there with those R&B legends. This Thursday, she'll be in the mosh pit with the rest of us, as Tower of Power provides a much-needed soul vaccination at Alive at Five. Don't miss it.

ART
Last Thursday, a new experience was offered at the University Art Museum, when six of the artists in the current Mohawk-Hudson Regional participated in a Japanese-style slide talk they called Fast Talk. Brian Cirmo, Sharon Bates, Kelly Jones, Dorene Quinn, Richard Garrison and Harold Lohner were given 20 seconds per slide to talk about 20 images (that's less than 7 minutes total per artist) to an engaged and amused audience.

Before, between, and after the Fast Talks, DJ Truemaster spun house music while art fans mingled with each other and the Regional's diverse offerings. It was particularly fun to observe as gray-curled, bespectacled museum director Janet Riker introduced and thanked "DJ True," proving that you can be geeky, middle-aged, and hip all at once.

The artists appeared to have a ball with the breezy format, even when the wrong slide popped up, which only happened a couple of times but was still enough to keep them on their toes. All in all, it was entertaining, informative, and well received by a capacity crowd. I hope they'll bring the concept back again.

Note: the Regional - an annual must-see for local art lovers and lovers of local art - ends on Aug. 8, so if you haven't seen it yet, you still have time.

Metroland at 30

This morning, Metroland, the Capital Region's alternative newsweekly, celebrates 30 years of publishing. What a time in the history of newsprint to mark a 30th anniversary. Nationwide, dailies and weeklies are going smaller, calling it quits, going into bankruptcy or laying off massive numbers of employees.

The causes are skyrocketing newsprint prices (exacerbated by decreasing volume); plummeting advertising dollars (thanks to the Internet); and an economy that is either in a recession or a depression depending on whom you ask (let's blame Bush for that).

So it is in that climate that I join Metroland in celebrating its 30 years of continuous weekly coverage of the arts in our region (along with shorter terms of important alternative news coverage and other reporting and features - the publication began as an entertainment monthly in disco-dominated 1978).

Judging from last week's issue, the new Metroland is smaller than it had been and has lost the nicer white pages it used for the cover and some inside spreads - but it has made up for that by adding color printing throughout. Though the slightly diminished tabloid (it's lost a half-inch in either direction) seems really tiny when folded in half, as I usually carry it, issue No. 5 of Volume 32 is packed with the kind of stuff we have come to count on from our free weekly: thoughtful columns by Jo Page, Paul Rapp and Dan Savage (yes, Savage Love is a favorite); edgy cartoons from Tom Tomorrow and Jen Sorensen (Slowpoke); off-beat political and business coverage; and reviews, reviews, reviews. Last week's issue also includes a full-page guide to Troy Night Out, and several pieces of color art accompanying various forms of coverage of other art-related events.

With the Times Union having recently consolidated its arts coverage into two main sections a week (Preview and Unwind) and The Daily Gazette following suit (this is its first week of reconfigured sections), Metroland at 30 is a major player again.

I'll admit, I didn't see this coming. As a two-time former Metroland contributor (from 1987-91 and 2001-05), my experiences with the paper are too numerous to sort out - but as recently as 6 months ago it wasn't holding my attention at all as a reader. Suddenly that has changed, and I find the tabloid feels as vital as it did back in the day.

The two art reviewers in current rotation represent a high mark for local critical coverage, and though I am not a huge fan of the academic writing style favored by one of them, I know the community at large clamors for whatever the media will offer in this field and is grateful for Metroland's constancy. Sean Stone, now a long-tenured arts editor, is guiding important information to the Art Murmur and Art Beat columns, and the weekly Night & Day calendar feature also regularly promotes gallery and museum offerings.

For all this I wish to thank founder Peter Iselin, editor and publisher Stephen Leon and the editorial staff, writers and photographers of Metroland. Congratulations on a long war well fought - may you battle on for 30 years to come.