Free!Issue 5

Serving The Creative Communities From Chicago To Milwaukee

“O’ come great farce and sing at my beside” -- Lauren Miller

Ojibway Valleyby Dave Gourdoux

Bill ReidMeet Da Bee

As part of their Senior Studio Art Thesis Seminar course, Carthage College art majors present a capstone exhibition of their work in the H. F. Johnson Gallery of Art and Gallery B. Works in ceramic, print, drawing, sculpture/installation, and painting will be featured by Carolyn Griffith, Clayton Irwin, Merry Gilly, Jena Thomas, Jessica Rinka, and Jenni Perdzock.

2014 Senior Thesis Studio Art Exhibit

Opening Reception:Saturday, May 10, 2014, 1-4 p.m.

Coming This Fall

Exhibit Runs: May 6 to May 16, 2014

Gallery hours: Tuesday – Friday 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.Thursday Evening 6 – 8 p.m.Saturday 1 – 4 p.m.

A Re-Visioning: New Works in PolymerSeptember 9 - October 25, 2014Featuring: Jana Roberts Benzon, Heather Campbell, Rachel Carren, Jeffrey Lloyd Dever, Meredith Dittmar, Kathleen Dustin, Rachel Gourley, Alev Gozonar, Lindly Haunani, Maggie Maggio,Laurie Mika, Elise Winters and many more.

Jena Thomas Freud's DogEarthenware Low Fire Clay, Stain, and Low Fire Glaze • 2013

Carolyn Griffith Magically DeliciousColored marker on Yupo • 2013

For more information on upcoming events, visit www.carthage.edu/artgallery

StudentAd_LeftoftheLake.pdf 1 4/4/14 10:29 AM

4  A Message From The Publisher / Left of The Lake

Dear Chet,

While I am aware that you have family responsibilities and a million other obligations, it has come to my attention that you have been less than productive lately. That’s too bad. I’ve heard you mention that you don’t have any time, but I’d like to point out that you somehow found the time to watch several seasons of “American Horror Story.” Congratulations on polishing off the entire series in less than two weeks; that is quite an achievement.

I’ve known you for a long time, so let me be 100% honest with you. Watching YouTube clips, playing video games, or sitting and drinking a cup (or five) of coffee are all things that take time, don’t they? It seems to me that you have more time than you might care to admit.

We have established that you do, in fact, have time, so what is the problem? You live in a place that is bristling with creative energy. There are opportunities to show/perform all the time, so what’s the hold up? Are you put off that this area has a reputation of having more artists than collectors? Is it that you feel ignored by your city? These are both valid points, and worthy of discussion; however, the last time I checked it wasn’t anyone else’s responsibility to:

• Promote yourself or your events • Educate people about the arts • Market your talent • Improve your skill set • Force you to stop being lazy

Only you can be responsible for you. I am not telling you this to be mean, but rather because I care. I hope to see a more productive version of you soon!

Sincerely, Chet

A Message From The PublisherBy Chet Griffith

07 Nash by Brandon Minga

09 Nesbit by Katie Dylewski

10 Meet Bill Reid by Peg Rousar-Thompson

16 Ojibway Valley by Dave Gourdoux

21 On Your Left by Janette Louden

24 Comics! by Josh Frazer & Chet Griffith

28 Your Kid = Picasso by Kelle Dame27 Pod Garden by Agnes Friedlander

31 Untitled poem by Lauren Miller

32 Ecliptical Penance by Jacob Simonsen

34 Smoke Rings by Duke Kruse

35 2FL: At A Glance by Lisa Adamowicz Kless

39 Submission Information

06 New Glasses by Amanda Feldt-Smith

Cover: Bill Reid“The Expulsion of Hades By Clowns”

Painted Steel

Publisher: Chet GriffithGraphic Designer: Joshua FrazerEditor: Lisa Adamowicz KlessEditor: Peg Rousar-ThompsonManaging Editor: John Bloner, Jr.Contact Us At: editor@leftofthelake.com

Left of the LakeIssue 5

*Items in Red DenoteArtist Features

6  From Texas To The Midwest / Left of The Lake

New Glasses

She’s dressed to the ninesImpressing his blinded eyesBeauty of darkness

Amanda Feldt-Smith

Brandon Minga / Nash 7

kenoshaharbormarket.com

T H M A

Produce, Cheese, Meats, Pastry, Fresh Mushrooms, Chips, Chocolate, Unique Arts & Crafts, Soaps,

Prepared Foods, Live Music, and More

2 Ave. between 54th & 56th St. and Place de Douai

HarborPark • Kenosha, Wisconsin

Every Saturday — 9–2

Every Saturday through May 10, 2014

9–1

A E-S M V S

A M I W

WHM

St. • Downtown Kenosha, WisconsinR C Aforthe

May O. ,

(Closed on Dec. , & Jan. , )

� Farm fresh produce� Unique arts and crafts

� Meats, eggs, vegetables, fish, cheeses� Fresh baked goods and savory snacks

Katie Dylewski / Nesbit 9

10  Bill Reid / Left of The Lake

Left of The Lake / Bill Reid 11

The life-sized dolphin in the front yard should have tipped me off.

I should have realized as I walked up to Bill Reid’s front door, that his imagination couldn’t be contained in just an art gallery or studio. His website and even the words of other artists could not have prepared me for the colors and texture of this new world.

Entering Bill Reid’s home is a high dive into the creativity pool. I stood in his doorway, gasping like a fish and trying to remember how to swim. Bill’s art is everywhere, min-gling with green plants and set off by brightly painted walls. His three dimensional characters decorate the windows, hang over the kitchen table and march along the back of his stove.

Bill is a sculptor and a painter. He takes sheets of steel, metal rods, and a brilliant palette, and 

creates pieces that reach to the ceiling and others so tiny they can be held in the palm of your hand. His sculptures hold books and mail, they light up and have cranks that turn, secret doors that hide tiny beds. They hold fire and toilet paper, make music, and get shown off each year in Racine’s 4th of July parade.

But Bill isn’t just an artist. Bill’s a storyteller.

Each piece he creates has its own mythol-ogy, its own language. The astronaut being mauled by a mechanical rabbit has a story. The Watermelion that guards the foot of his bed. Bunnski the Rabbit has exotic adventures and the Hawonions have a complete culture that would dazzle any ordinary anthropologist.

And if the dolphin on the lawn didn’t make me suspicious, the Reid family cars all parked out in the driveway should have. Bill’s garage 

BILL REID

By Peg Rousar-Thompson

12  Bill Reid / Left of The Lake

is overflowing with creative vehicles: his Bee Bomb, hand built on the chassis and drive-train of a 1988 Ford Escort and street legal, Mowbee Dick (and Mow Baby), a pedal car and tow-behind trailer, the Manta-Ray and the Reidster – all elbow for space.

With each piece comes a background and a detailed narrative. A play on words. A personal folklore that bursts from the artist’s imagina-tion and makes each of his creations alive and endearing. You can’t look at this work without wanting to touch, to hear the stories, or drive the cars. Or crawl into Bill Reid’s head and have a look around.

Just remember, the dolphin and I both have warned you.

For  more  information  on  Bill  Reid  and his fantastic creatures, visit his website at  

 www.beebomb.com. Locally, you can see Bill’s work at RAM in Racine and the Tory Folliard Gallery in Milwaukee. He would be happy to friend you on Facebook, just beware of the Abombinabill Mowman.

An Excerpt From Ojibway Valley By Dave Gourdoux

Left of The Lake / Ojibway Valley 17

The last time Harry Wolf danced high atop the old truss bridge that crossed the 

Ojibway River in the Ojibway Valley was in late March of 1926. The river was high with spring snow melt, and occasional chunks of ice floated along the accelerated current. Drunk and spurred on by the white men he’d never met before who offered him whiskey, Harry, even at sixty three years old, was still athletic and acrobatic, still lean and muscular. He easily navigated the beams and cross ties and climbed to the top of the metal structure.

At the top, more than two hundred feet above the river, he stood up straight and faced the setting sun. He felt the cold western breeze against his face, it was icy and clean, and he felt it move through his shoulder length iron gray hair. He could hear the sound of a not too distant crow cawing, and he thought of the story his grandfather told him when he was little, how his father before him, Harry’s great grandfather, had the ability to transform himself into a crow, and how as the sun set on the eve of a great battle with the Sioux, flew east into the morning of the next day and saw his own death.

“Dance, injun, dance!” someone yelled from below. It always amazed Harry how quickly the crowds would grow. It’d been thirty five years since the first time, and the legend of the drunken Indian who could barely stand on level ground and then turn around and dance a jig or a rain dance up on top of the iron beams, all for a gulp of fire water, grew throughout the region. Harry danced only once or twice a year, but whenever he did, people seemed 

to materialize out of the air, standing at the foot of the bridge, craning their necks to see, gasping every time he hopped from one beam to another. Harry looked down. He estimated there were about thirty people watching.

A natural acrobat, Harry was born with an innate ability to climb and a sense of balance that only the combination of alcohol and the flat earth could disrupt. Whether it was trees or the rock formations on the east side of West Ridge or the beams atop of the bridge, he loved climbing, the sensation of his feet leaving the ground. The spectators below never understood how exhilarating that sensation was to Harry. They didn’t understand that high up on top of the bridge, the air was clean and he was beyond the reach of the pain and alcohol that on the ground consumed him.

He let out a loud hoot and put his hand to his mouth and raised his right foot and started doing his “rain dance,” an exaggerated impres-sion of dances he had seen in the silent cow-boy and Indian serials in the movie theater in Neil, Wisconsin. There was nothing remotely authentic about the dance. Harry knew a little bit about real Ojibway dancing, but, even when his mind was polluted with the foulest of rot gut alcohol, it never occurred to him to des-ecrate those dances by performing them for the ignorant white people staring with gaping mouths up at the top of the bridge.

He hopped up and down on one foot, on the same beam, and then he hopped to another beam, all the while putting his hand to his mouth and letting out high pitched hoots. 

18  Ojibway Valley / Left of The Lake

Then, on the outside beam, he put his hands behind his back, and lifted his left leg out to the left, brought it back to the beam, and raised his right leg out to the right, as if his left leg knocked his right leg into the air, and then he’d bring the right leg down and lift his left leg, never more than one foot touching the beam, and he kept dancing this jig, faster and faster. He’d done this dance countless times before, with the crowd holding its breath at first and then breaking into nervous laughter as he picked up speed.

Harry danced his jig, facing the sun on the horizon, bright red, not a cloud in the sky. He heard the crow again, and then he saw it, flying along the river’s edge, a black silhouette against the red sky. He thought of his father and grandfather and great grandfather, and he thought of his own son, and he felt calm. He 

felt sober and at peace with the world. The air was clean and cool and crisp.

His right foot came down, and it missed the beam, and that was it. He was gone. The crowd below gasped and screamed at the black out-line of Harry’s body against the red sky as it dropped from the top of the bridge into the fast and icy waters of the Ojibway River.

Dave  Gourdoux  lives  in  Pleasant   Prairie, Wisconsin. You can find his personal blog, “Drivel by Dave”  at djgourdoux.word-press.com. OJibway Valley is available on  Amazon.com.

Left of The Lake / Title 19

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Artworks Ad Summer 2014.pdf 1 3/30/14 12:23 PM

Janette Louden / On Your Left 21

Discover America’s Largest Craft Collection Learn more about current RAM art exhibitions and events at ramart.org

Racine Art Museum441 Main Street, Downtown Racine 262.638.8300

Photography: Dan Bishop

Discover America’s Largest Craft Collection Learn more about current RAM art exhibitions and events at ramart.org

Racine Art Museum441 Main Street, Downtown Racine 262.638.8300

Photography: Dan Bishop

A Community Celebrationof Kenoshan George Orson Welles

on the occasion of his 100th birthday

www.citizenwelles.org

Coming In 2015

actor poet puppeteer painter producer pianist director cartoonistscreenwriter bullfighter and magician george orson welles

Chet Griffith

COMICS

Friends Forever / Josh Frazer

Agnes Friedlander / Pod Garden 27

28  Your Kid = Picasso / Left of The Lake

I get really excited when a client wants to incorporate their child’s art into their home décor. I’m talking the kind of excited that is probably annoying to normal, non-décor ob-sessed people. I just can’t help myself. It’s the one tried and true way of incorporating some fun, original art into your home. Their artwork is usually filled with bright colors and whimsy. The best part is that it makes little kids feel incredibly special.

You don’t always have to invest in an expensive frame to show them that their creative side is valued. Its placement and prominence is key. Every season, I fill the frames in my front hallway with my daughter’s work.

The thought of spending a near fortune on a frame for a young one’s drawing or painting makes me a little giddy as well. Mainly because my inner child loves that it’s not what you’re “supposed to do” and an awesome frame can really push the bounds of ridiculousness. I mean, if we are framing our kids’ art and cel-ebrating free spirits and all, why not go all out?

When it comes to displaying the creations of your little loved ones, it’s the perfect time and opportunity to get creative and throw caution to the wind. It’s also the perfect opportunity to let your kids have some say in their own home. They might not get to pick the living room curtains, but at least they can display 

their favorite painting on the mantle or even the kitchen counter.

Such a seemingly small thing can be incredibly empowering. Just think, your favorite musician, artist, or inventor is the perfect example of how far a little confidence in self-expression can take a person.

What will you do with your child’s creations? Feel free to visit my blog for more ideas on dis-playing children’s art @ kelledame.blogspot.com.

Your Kid = PicassoTreating your child’s art like it is world famousBy Kelle Dame

Left of The Lake / Your Kid = Picasso 29

O’ come great farce and sing at my bedside

sing the song of crinkled paper

written on photographs I cannot remember

How ludicrous of me to assume respect would be given

to assume it was deserved

The windows go nowhere

they open to a white wall where I collect people like postage stamps

and when growing bored send them away

Someday, not tomorrow, I will be less destructive

perilous in a land of forgotten lamps

oils akimbo

cover the walls

Lauren Miller

32  Jacob Simonsen / Ecliptical Penance ( Judgement)

www.leftofthelake.com

34  Duke Kruse / Smoke Rings

Left of The Lake / 2nd First Look 35

While their girlfriends are in Europe for one last adventure before they all head off to college, back in Mexico, Tenoch (played by Diego Luna) and his friend Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal) meet Luisa, a decade-older woman played by Mari-bel Verdú. When they both become infatuated with her, they invite her along on a road trip to a “legendary” beach that doesn’t exist. What they seem to think will be a carefree adventure turns out to be much more complicated than they expected, with implications that will linger long after they come back home.

Directed  by  Alfonso  Cuarón,  one  of  the strengths of “Y Tu Mamá También” is that it often takes its time, lingering in moments. In scenes where the boys and Luisa are driving, filming was done so that the audience feels like they’re a passenger in the car, seeing both violence and beauty as it takes place on the side of the road. Dubbed a “coming of age” movie by many, it would be a disservice to focus only on Tenoch and Julio though. Viewers may wonder about some of Luisa’s motivations and feelings, but by the end of the movie, a revela-tion is made that helps to put some of it into perspective. The film is as much about Luisa’s journey as it is theirs.

The soundtrack and glimpses into the political issues in Mexico in the early 2000s add even more layers to an already rich story, and tension is built through how the film mimics real life. 

Relationships are tested and strained, things get messy, and there aren’t many clear-cut areas of black and white. It all creates a perfect storm that makes the movie compelling and keeps viewers along for the ride because this is how real life unfolds; nearly everyone should be able to relate to it on some level—even “tu mamá también” (“your mama too”).

For more articles by 2nd First Look, visit our website at www.2ndFirstLook.com. You can also find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/2ndFirstLook.

by Lisa Adamowicz Kless

TransparentWatercolor

Society of America

May 10 - August 10, 2014Kenosha Public Museum WEst & south GAllEriEs5500 First Avenue | Kenosha, Wi 53140 | 262-653-4140 | www.kenoshapublicmuseum.org

"Pride of the Prairie" Marlin Rotach, 2013 Skyledge Award Winner38th Annual

National JuriedExhibitioN

Left Of The Lake

AppearingJune 1st,

2014

www.leftofthelake.com

ColoringBook

Image by: Ashley Nigl

Left of The Lake / Submissions Information 39

Submit Your Work To Left Of The Lake

Left of the Lake Magazine is published quarterly and accepts work continuously.  We welcome submissions from both new and established artists and writers, nationally and internationally, but first consideration is offered to the creative people in our region of Southeast Wisconsin and Northeast Illinois.  

General Guidelines:•  All work must be original and not previously published•  No simultaneous submissions

Submissions Welcome:•  Poetry (maximum of three pieces)•  Fiction or Non-Fiction (400 words or less)•  Visual Art, Photography, or Comics (maximum of two pieces)

How-To Submit:•  We prefer electronic submissions, either as an attachment or in the body of an email.  Send work to editor@leftofthelake.com and please include your name, address, and a short bio of 30 words or less.

Questions? Contact us!editor@leftofthelake.com

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