Like the Way You Work It

Things got crazy today. When I woke up, I thought I had an idea of what my week entailed.

Wrong, so wrong.

By 10:31, one of my editors had unexpectedly said yes to four of my pitches. Great news, but it meant I needed to dive in quickly to make so many short deadlines.

By 11:24,  my companion for dinner and a play tomorrow night had to cancel and asked to reschedule for the weekend. Naturally, I already had plans for both nights.

By 2:37, I'd been asked if I could do a last-minute piece to be turned around this week. What poor freelancer turns down work?

By 3:17, I get a group email, first thanking us for the thankless job we do and then asking for pitches for two upcoming special issues. ASAP, as in, snooze and you lose.

By 3:49, my Friday night drinks and lecture companion has canceled. Can my Tuesday pick up the slack on Friday?

By 5:08, I again hear from an editor, this time with another last minute assignment, this one non-negotiable. Hey, it's money, so I'll find a way.

By 5:15, I am sitting at Rappahannock next to a woman who announces it is National Margarita Day and makes the bartender grimace when she asks if he can make one (long pause...he can) and then instead orders an Old Fashioned because it's a happy hour special.

Heaven give us both strength.

I, too, was there for happy hour, but more because of half off oysters and $5 Prosecco than because of any made-up holiday. The couple next to me were doing the same, albeit in a far more leisurely manner.

First they ordered two Old Fashioneds and half a dozen oysters, two of each kind. Only after emptying their glasses and slurping every oysters did they place the exact same order again.

Me? I got Prosecco and a dozen Old Saltes and just did it all in one fell swoop.

My efficiency allowed time to check out the newly-opened Rapp Session next door, a charming space that resembles a cleaner version of the inside bar at Merroir and boasts extras: beer and wine for sale, packaged mignonette, horseradish and pork rilletes, cured meats sliced off the bone, whole fish sold by the pound to come, all backed by a wall of old black and white photos and seafood advertisements.

Perhaps most brilliant of all, a bar with a completely different cocktail program than Rappahannock that stays open until 2 a.m. every night. Hello, gorgeous.

Properly warmed up, my next stop was the Modlin Center for a lecture by curator Michael Schreiber of the exhibit, "Bernard Perlin: An Anthology of Drawings 1934-1994."

My first surprise was that Perlin was a native Richmonder, growing up on Ellwood Avenue and graduating from T.J. at the tender age of 15. His credo was to live life to the fullest.

How had I never heard of this artist before?

Schreiber had gotten to know Perlin by writing him a fan letter, then visiting him in Connecticut, an evening that turned out to be his introduction to Scotch drinking. In the three years before Perlin died, he was privy to all kinds of stories and memories from the artist that he has now turned into a book.

Looking at the images of Perlins' work, it wasn't hard to see the social realist perspective of many artists of that era, including Ben Shahn, for whom he worked.

Happily embracing the bohemian life in NYC as a young man, one of his earliest commissions was a mural of Adam and Eve for Vincent Price's bathroom. His portrait of Price now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.

His work moved through Post Office murals, war and propaganda posters and illustrations for prestigious magazines, then he stopped making art, then he went back to school and began again.

I couldn't have been the only person itching to get over to the gallery to see the work in person.

Perlin's skill was apparent in the delicacy of the silverpoints and nude drawings while his "message" pieces - a 1963 print called "The Divorce" showing a man bent over by the weight of his ex-wife, children, house, lawyer and accountant nearly destroy him - were heavier-handed.

It's a fabulous show that Richmond art-lovers absolutely need to see because I can't be the only one unaware of Perlin's obvious talent and prolonged productivity.

Several family members were there taking in the show. Leaning over a case of work from Perlin's youth, an older woman pointed at a colorful drawing and said, "He painted that for me when I was three! I don't know why my mother or I never got it framed."

Hopefully this new show makes up for that, although she did say as soon as it ended, she was finally framing it.

As long as I was at UR, I also caught "Nathan Benn: Kodachrome Memory, American Pictures 1972-1990," a show so colorful it was like watching a Technicolor film.

I mentioned to the man at the desk in the gallery that I had recently overheard a young woman discover what Kodachrome meant after hearing the Paul Simon song; she was amazed. He shook his head. "The only pictures those people will ever take is with one of these!" and held up a cell phone with a look of disgust.

Better not to further that conversation, so I went to look at the work.

Benn's subject choices were everyday people and scenes circa the '70s and '80s, so things such as a girl at a Vermont commune in 1973, standing on a porch calling people to dinner. Just another sweet-looking hippie chick rebelling against her parents' suburban life, no doubt.

A stylish but heavy Tennessee Williams in Key West in 1981. Mr. Rogers on a guest room bed in Pittsburgh in 1990. A locomotive mechanic with black, greasy fingers in Vermont circa 1973.

One that especially grabbed me was of Jamaican workers who'd come to Florida in 1981 to cut sugar cane. Two men, dressed to the nines in three-piece polyester suits, each with not one but two hats on their heads, posed at a Florida airport, flush with cash after the season.

Here were two dudes who were definitely going to be popular with the ladies back in Jamaica.

As I walked around the exhibit admiring the long-gone world of the photographs, a couple came in and we got to talking about the loss of Kodachrome and its vividness.

Pointing at a picture of cows by a barn, the man, who said he was a painter, exclaimed, "You could practically kiss them!" as if he had a history of kissing cows. When he got to one of trees, he made comparisons to Cezanne, saying, "You could almost pluck the fruit off the tree and eat it!"

And that woman with the enormous bouffant at the bus station in Mississippi? You could practically smell the Aqua Net.

By the time I got home, craziness resumed with multiple emails, my favorite not asking, but offering. "I am definitely flattered, humbled and at your service. Yes, I'd be delighted to meet with you. Please feel free to call me at your convenience at most hours."

Hmm, when do you suppose most hours end?

Everyone else needed to know something. Could I do lunch on Thursday? Could we do a phone interview because they're in Florida until Monday? Did I have a number so the media rep could call instead of email? Did I want to tour the factory with an apprentice? Did I want to eat before the play tomorrow? Could I do a road trip on Friday?

Could I answer everyone before my head explodes?

Apparently I can, providing me with the best response of all: Where is that kissing face emoticon when you need it?

Can I get back with you on that after this week?

Intimate and Grand

Oops, I did it again. Set out for culture and ran smack into the nexus of sports and cops directing traffic.

Unlike last night when I was on foot, tonight's inconvenience was brought to me by University of Richmond's basketball game, meaning I sat in a backup of cars trying to get somewhere completely different than where I was headed.

My goal: the Modlin Center for the opening lecture of "Garry Winogrand: Family Intimacies" by the photographer's first wife, Adrienne Judith Lubeau-Winogrand, a delightful former dancer who took many tangents to tell us a small part of the story of her marriage to the central figure in American mid-century photography.

How much more fascinating it was to have the woman who was his subject and bedmate talking about a dead artist than a curator.

"I had the honor to be Garry's first wife," was how she launched the lecture. Seriously, how many first wives refer to the honor of their first (failed) time at bat?

Showing photographs as she spoke from an armchair onstage, she told us she'd had no idea he went to burlesque houses at night until she saw the photos. "I feel I really made him happy," she said. "He decided on me and I went along for the ride."

Actually, I see a kind of romance to that.

Displaying a rare shot of him, she said, "He looks terrific, doesn't he? The problem was he smoked three packs a day, drank like a fish and sometimes stayed up for 24 hours." She thought that might explain his early death at 56, although his daughter was convinced it was all the darkroom chemicals he was exposed to regularly over the years.

Referring to his second wife, she said, "She only lasted two years. By then, he'd drained her bank account. Should I say that?'" Seems she's still friends with Wife #3, whose daughter was flower girl at her own daughter's wedding. Very cozy, indeed.

Many of the photographs were of Adrienne herself - sleeping, holding their children - and she wasn't shy about admitting that'd felt like she was married to a lens, not a man because he was always shooting her. "It was a constant presence."

After her talk, we adjourned to the Hartnett Museum to see the exhibit, a window into another era since most of the pictures were from the '60s and '70s.

Some were downright old-fashioned, such as a child on a wooden horse or a baby carriage in a park. I heard several young women marveling over that antique.

Ethan on 93rd Avenue, New York showed the artist's son dressed in a striped romper (something toddlers don't wear anymore), pointing a toy gun at a window. We don't allow that anymore.

Another showed the little boy slightly older running down the street, cowboy hat in hand. Adrienne had said during the talk that that picture usually hangs in her living room and she's already missing it terribly. What I found interesting about it was that the wide sidewalk held not a piece of trash, not so much as a cigarette butt as far as the eye could see.

My favorite in the entire show was 1967's Adrienne After the Bath, a photograph that could have been modeled on a Degas pastel. She sits naked on the closed toilet in a narrow, tiled bathroom, a towel around part of her body with a curved, young hip exposed.

It was one of the most exquisite photographs I've ever seen, all the more meaningful for having just seen the subject herself 58 years later. She's aged well, probably a result of her dancing career.

After mingling at the reception, I went into the other gallery to see Anti-Grand: Contemporary Perspectives on Landscape, another new exhibit but as different as it could be: all the works were post-2000.

I had flashbacks to the '70s with Village Green by Vaughn Bell, a large, house-shaped plastic terrarium set on legs with the steamed up interior walls every former hippie chick recognizes.

What made this one so cool was the opening on the bottom of the "house" that allowed the viewer to stick your head inside to inhale the humid, plant-scented air inside. Groovy to the nth degree and very 21st century. We can't just look, we have to experience.

There was something very compelling about Mono Lake, CA, a huge digital print of the lake that had been soaked in Mono lake water causing water stains through which you could see the actual photo.

Inheritance was a large, wooden black box into which slides of endangered wildlife areas were projected while a humidifier spewed steam out of the opening, sort of an implied scolding for what we have wrought.

The show's strength was the wide-ranging notion of landscape as interpreted by an array of international artists during the new millennium. Even video games were included, not that I knew what to do with them.

As I was coming out of the bathroom afterwards, Adrienne was headed in and I took a moment to thank her for sharing her life stories with us. I said I'd been especially impressed with how she'd said she'd held fast to her own dreams and goals, even when her husband hadn't paid much attention to them.

"Oh, but he came and photographed me at the dance studio, did you see?" she asked eagerly. I had, but I also sensed it must have been challenging to hold fast to her artistic soul (Robert Motherwell was her painting professor!) back in the '50s when motherhood reigned supreme. Despite no longer being young, she still had the body of a dancer.

Leaving UR, I decided that the big game was still being played because cars were parked everywhere but there wasn't a soul in sight. Go, team.

My cold hands and I stopped for the fabulous and very French hot chocolate Amour serves, namely Les Confitures a l'Ancienne, while eavesdropping on a couple discussing their divorces, what Ritalin does to kids and the probability of weed being made legal in Virginia.

We had a joint discussion (ha!) about why firemen are different than policemen (she claimed there was scientific study to explain the different personalities) and why Amour should have scantily-clad firemen at their fire department benefit dinners next month.

After the chocolate, I indulged in a half glass of J. Fritsch Pinot Gris, a rich, semi-sweet sipper to complement what I'd just had and send me on my way after an evening well spent.

Part of that was the mid-century romance! He decided on me and I went along for the ride. That's as quaint as a baby carriage, but I don't even think we allow that anymore.

Although as long as you're sure it makes both people happy, why not? Should I say that?

The FSA Eight

Tonight it was all about the women.

In this case, "Women of the FSA Working in the  South 1935-1943," the lecture topic at UR by Beverly Brannan, curator of photography at the Library of Congress.

The diminutive Brannan was a terrific speaker, full of information and clearly still wildly enthusiastic about her job tracking down information about female photographers.

She immediately put these women in context, saying that only eight women had worked for the Farm Security Administration, but those eight had created 19,318 black and white photographs, roughly 20% of the work.

The rest of the FSA's photographic output was done by a hundred men.

I could make the point that if eight women could do 20% of the work, they should have only needed 32 men to do the other 80%, but I'll let that slide.

Brannan's talk was in conjunction with the exhibit "The Social Lens: Photographs by Dorothea Lange and Her Contemporaries" so naturally she began by talking about Lange.

Practically everyone is familiar with her iconic photograph "Migrant Mother," many of us even in the audience knowing that the haggard looking women was only 32 when the picture was taken.

But what I learned from Brannan was that the woman, who was a widow, had been shunned by the other migrant women for fear she'd steal their husbands.

And that she was known as a fantastic dancer.

It's hard to tell all that from the grim image of her and her three children.

We got a lesson in the government's Resettlement Administration, the people who were trying to help destitute families find a better place to live.

People unable to make minimum wage.

Farm workers who'd been replaced by machinery.

Families who left the South because they couldn't survive.

Like the couple from Scandinavia who were resettled to Alaska, the better to use their cold farming skills.

Fortunately, Lange wrote detailed captions for every picture, thus ensuring an accurate record of  her photographic subject and their circumstances.

We heard about another female photographer, Marian Post Wolcott, who often had to charm her way out of difficult situations in rural locations where strange women were not welcome.

There were photographs of the dorms built in Arlington, Virginia to house all the women war workers.

I learned that the FSA had no pay grade for photographers, so they were paid the Clerk/Typist rate.

Not surprisingly, that rate was $2,300 for women and $3,000 for men.

After the lecture, the near capacity crowd headed over to UR's Hartnett Museum of Art to see the exhibition.

I'd already bet my date that we'd see a certain Frenchman who always seems to be at events with free food and drink (there was a reception) and sure enough, there he was, making a meal of it.

We eschewed the reception for the photographs and began making our way through the crowds.

"Out of Rear Window" showed laundry hanging on a fire escape, but the interesting part was the notation that the family who lived there had been put on a list for resettlement.

Their apartment was in NYC and they were being resettled to Highlands, New Jersey.

It didn't have quite the same resonance as the Scandinavians being resettled to Alaska, but I'm guessing they were just as eager to go.

Moving through the galleries of social documentary photography was a history lesson for the period of the late thirties and early forties.

Faces evoked desperation and there was little joy to be seen on anyone's faces, even the children.

Proud men faced the camera unflinchingly.

Men stood in bread lines for a handout from the White Angel, a rich woman doing good.

Fact is, the FSA was having this world documented so that they'd have justification for Congress of why funds needed to be allocated for aid.

The proof was all over the walls of the galleries.

Leave it to eight women to empathetically capture a country in shambles.

Not to mention that they did it for 75% of the pay.

And often they had to do it in areas where women and/or whites, much less those with a camera, were not welcome.

Luckily, they had charm to get them through.

That and womanly determination.