The Lowe Art Museum opens China: Fifty Years Inside the People’s Republic through November 17 with 172 color and black-and-white photographs, beginning with earlier pictures that expose communist China, while later shots reveal the country’s open-door policy and how the landscape, people and ideology of the country has drastically changed. As artist Zheng Nong wrote, the point is “to keenly observe a world of everyday people and places, [and] to find those who will shape our inner spaces.”

The rich tradition that draws China into this century has been somewhat hidden to the West since the rise of the People’s Republic. The photographers in this exhibit have tried to make it accessible to us. Lois Conner, in an attempt “to acknowledge the beauty of the land,” captured a picture of the Le Shan Sichuan Province in 1986, which is cropped into a rectangular frame and hangs down like a painter would suspend a scroll. The messages that are culturally embedded in her works express man’s insignificant place in the natural world.

Wang Jinsong, in his series “Parents” and “Standard Family,” elucidates the socio-economic ramifications of a nuclear super-power with a population that has doubled to one billion since communism. Pay attention to the details of the composition as the photographer places couples into categories of personal wealth or geographic region, every object and line telling a story.

In Macduff Everton’s “Special Economic Zone,” a Chinese metropolis is crowned with American advertisements for Coca-Cola, Marlboro and Salem. At the bottom corner of the piece, a woman is walking with a Mickey Mouse t-shirt. The irony of Chinese people in a homeland pervaded by American commerce is thick and informative. The artist Robert Glenn Ketchum wrote that it is a “collision of ancient and modern.” “Students on Hunger Strike,” a photograph of Tiananmen Square, Beijing in 1989 by Stuart Franklin, speaks well of the determined human will.

Also by Franklin, “Tourists photographing Welcome Pine Tree,” shot in the Huangshan Mountains in 1998, shows an unsettling landscape of some of the most beautiful mountains in the world in the background, an amateur photographer adorned with an “Amusement Park” hat in the foreground. Perhaps seeing this forbidden land of the East (the sumptuous mountains) may invoke a vaguely familiar visualization of the forbidden land of opportunity in the West (the economic bastion of the U.S.).

Chinese art brings to light the mystic paradoxes of life (such as man vs. nature), not the answers to our endless existential questions. Browse through scroll paintings and other works from the museum’s permanent collection in “Ink, Water, Brush, Hand, and Heart: Painting from the Chinese Collection” to learn more about the country’s culture.

Ultimately, the experience of seeing China through so many artists’ eyes is a privilege of learning in itself, especially through the time span of these formative 50 years. The photographers’ artistic documentation here excels in milking Chinese culture out into the complex arena of human connection.

Alex Saleeby can be reached at claysaleeby@hotmail.com

Check out the second novel by literary femme fatale, Vicki Hendricks, a Florida resident who teaches creative writing. Hendricks is obsessed with the absolute thrill of living, the exciting continuum of human emotion and the rousing buzz of adventure that life continuously has to offer. Voluntary Madness, set in the lush, hedonistic milieu of Key West, digs into the lives of doomed lovers, Juliette, a 22-year-old ex-Cracker Barrel waitress, and Punch, a 44-year-old, half-Jamaican and half-Italian diabetic and alcoholic who is slipping on the rim of death. The couple, both psychologically-ravaged by the crudity of their past lives (Juliette was sexually abused by her father since she was nine), vow to spoil themselves for one year in a pleasure-seeking and exhilarating lifestyle, which Punch would register in a novel-thus art imitates life. While taking the reader on an alcohol and drug-induced, revved-up ride through the tourist attractions and night spots of Key West, the story careens through numerous twists and turns as the couple will try anything for fun, no restraints, even breaking into the Hemingway House for a quick in-and-out. When they get caught by a security guard, Punch accidentally kills him and the plot takes on a more serious tone. Hendricks’ prose noir is entirely raw, sexy and unrelenting. Reminiscent of a female Bukowski, the author portrays well the incurable infection of love in a lonely world amidst the beauty of palm trees and the vulgarity of distressing past experiences.

~Omar Sommereyns

Venusian Skyline are a youthful quartet specializing in psychedelic indie rock, hailing from Vero Beach, Florida. They bring a unique alternative to the excess of electronica that is currently flooding South Florida. Their songs vary from soft and mellow ballads, to old-fashioned jams a la Pink Floyd in the emo generation. They are a rare find in Florida, and their music displays enough talent to encompass several varieties of texture.

The band’s pianist, Scott Poyer, is one of the most defining additives in the band’s overall style. He took the time to speak with Life & Art about what’s new and exciting in the world of Venusian Skyline.

Q: Venusian Skyline has a unique sound when compared to what is currently on mainstream radio. What bands have had the largest influence on your sound?

VS: There are many things that influence us as a band. Music is very personal to me and the other members. We don’t discuss our musical influences because it tends to devolve into a name-dropping game. As far as this band goes, I would say that other bands aren’t nearly as big of an influence as our desire to simply create beautifully dark music.

Q: Your CD was released by Undecided Records on September 17th. The release was a bit delayed, but are you pleased with the production?

VS: The CD won’t be officially released until October 15th. It was delayed all through September. The reasons are unknown to even us. But, yes, we are quite pleased with the sound of the recording. It sounds very organic, which is something we were striving for.

Q: Speaking of shows, I understand you have a relatively large tour coming up. Who are you playing with?

VS: We have our first tour for this band starting September 27th at the Respectable Street Cafe in West Palm Beach. As far as the other bands, I’m not sure. I know we are playing with Jett Brando for a handful of shows, and there’s another band called Joshua.

Q: What’s the scene like in Vero Beach?

VS: Vero has no musical scene.

Q: That’s unfortunate. I saw you guys in Melbourne last July, with two Christian rock bands. Are you in anyway affiliated with Christian rock, and how do you feel about that?

VS: No, we are not a Christian rock band, and we feel nothing.

Q: Does Venusian Skyline take a political stance on any issue in particular?

VS: A lot of bands say that they feel this way or that about pointless issues with little or no importance. The only thing I could possibly say about Venusian Skyline is that it’s four men on the deck of the Titanic, playing music as it sinks.

Q: Where do you see Venusian Skyline in 3 years?

VS: Hopefully we will be able to produce music full time with no distractions besides playing our songs, and connecting with the people who get it.

Q: If you could tour with any band, living or dead, who would it be?

VS: There are many bands we would love to tour with, both old and new. I would have to say Yanni.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to say to college kids who are into top forty music and/or college kids in general?

VS: If you are a college student into top 40 music I have virtually nothing to say to you.

For more info and mp3s: www.venusianskyline.net.

Kira Wisniewski can be reached at kira@punks.net.

It’s seemingly easy to forget about the struggles of the civil rights movement in our modern, desensitized society. Prominent black figures exist in every aspect of the social mold, making it almost impossible to imagine that in America’s not-too-distant history, black and white people were considered far from equal. It seems unreal, meandering along the mishmash of people South Beach, that most of the buildings once had separate bathrooms for black and white people, or that famous black performers of the past-men like Sammy Davis, Jr. and Louis Armstrong-had to come in through the back door of the very hotels they were hired to perform at.

The racial equality that exists today would not exist if it were not for the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the movement he upheld. In the Spirit of Martin: The Living Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a new exhibit at the Bass Museum of Art on Miami Beach, opens an amazing, heartrending window into America’s segregationist and racist past through the artistic expression of some of America’s most famous artists, including Norman Rockwell, Andy Warhol, Gordon Parks, Robert Rauschenberg and Jean Michel Basquiat.

The spirit of Dr. King lives strong. His voice resounds throughout the museum-the famous “I have a dream” speech accentuating the power behind this man’s vision-as works by renown and lesser-know artists delineate the stream of feelings and events that occurred at the time. Diverse mediums are used, such as photography, drawings, silkscreens, mixed-media, sculptures and paintings, all ascetically exposing the horrors of the movement: the marches, the riots, the bloodshed.

Tom Feelings’ “Slave Ship- Diagram/Figure” portrays the human body as a slave ship, evoking the suffering of a people stripped of their human worth: the images of slavery are omnipresent, dark faces shown weathered and impassive as they present their inventory numbers. Some of the works are well-known images that represent the struggle, such as Andy Warhol’s silkscreen image culled from the newspaper headlines of the period, “Birmingham Race Riot 1964.”

Robert Frank’s startling and eloquent black and white picture “Trolley, New Orleans,” taken on a cross-country trip through the South, shows the stark reality of the time. A white woman sits up front and a black man stares poignantly from the back of the bus. Two white children bridge the gap between them, giving insight to the change that the civil rights movement stood to make.

L’Merchie Fazier’s “From a Birmingham Jail: MLK” is a brightly colored quilt of silk photo transfers depicting Dr. King in his struggle in jail amidst images of Africa and slave ships. Willie Birch’s “Memories of the Sixties” is a vibrant mixed-media sculpture of an old, black “every-woman” hunched over, weaving a coverlet, which illustrates the contrasting political stances of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

In the Spirit of Martin is conducive in helping us mourn and remember a significant time in American history and can facilitate, through an aesthetic means, the understanding of younger Americans since many overlook the profusion of information they get in class. This exhibit celebrates Dr. King’s life and work without simplification or morbidity and will be on view until November 10.

Call 305-673-7530 for more info.

Patrice Grell Yursik can be reached at rastalove@hotmail.com

Barbershop creams the Box Office with thick lather and stays at No. 1 for the second week in a row, grossing an estimated $13.3 million. Success for the movie’s star doesn’t stop here: Dr. Dre will produce his new album and Cube is about to be signed to Aftermath.

In more barbershop news, rapper Juvenile was arrested for beating up and robbing barber, Bert Williams, in New Orleans. Juvenile accused Williams of making a bootleg recordings of his music and took necessary action. That’s how they do it dirty south style.

Wanting to tap into the modern woman’s sense of frustration, feminine authors have published The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage, edited by Cathi Hanauer.

Though, as experts predict, two-thirds of the fall’s 34 new programs will cease to exist next year, CSI: Miami, which premiered last night, is being called the season’s budding show that will likely become a hit. You can’t deny it, Miami’s the place to be.

Fox Sports decided to pull out the spot for a commercial that featured Mike Tyson as a baby-sitter for fear of infuriating the public. Tyson told a group of reporters earlier this year that he wished they “had children so [he] could kick them in the head or stomp on their testicles so you could feel [his] pain because that’s the pain [he’s] been waking up to every day.” Lennox Lewis, watch out for your kids.

P. Diddy has been ordered by a North Carolina superior court judge to pay $2.45 million in damages to a limo driver who claimed he was beaten by bodyguards hired by Combs for a 1995 Mary J. Blige concert. Puffy, that wannabe gangster from Westchester, declared that the claim has no merit whatsoever.

Chris Cornell, former lead of Soundgarden, and members of Rage Against The Machine sans singer Zack de la Rocha, are fusing and forming a new group called Audioslave. Epic Records announced November 19 as the official album release date.

Unbenownst to the general populace, the skatepark is becoming a unifying staple within the metropolitan (and suburban) cultural camouflage of this country. The arrival of Control Skateboarding, 2134 NW Miami Ct., in downtown Miami, signals a significant spark in this city’s youth and art culture. In a city that often appears creatively segregated, especially to out-of-state students, between South Beach, the Design District, UM’s campus, and the off-putting vibe of downtown, a spacious meeting ground for skaters – people who tend to have one arm in the sugar jar of fashion, music and innovation – is bound to birth connectivity and progress.

The major player behind Control’s transformation from a Floridian pipe dream to an actual destination is owner/founder Matt Cantor, a 25-year old skater native to Richmond Heights, Miami. Cantor can pinpoint his introduction to skating with understandable precisio to the age of 8, while he was staying with relatives in Virginia over spring break. Dipping into cheesy home videoesque reminicing, Cantor remembers the day he mysteriously found a skateboard behind his aunt’s La-Z-Boy chair.

“Before then I’d heard about skateboards, and liked the idea of them, but that day it was like, “This is a real skateboard!” says Cantor.

He returned to Miami and by the age of 9 he was visiting Stone Edge Skateboard Park (now closed) in South Daytona, Florida with a small group of friends. He was enthralled by the notion that people had designed the park solely for skating, so every ramp and gap had been blueprinted for the best session possible. Older park regulars like Brewce Martin, who went on to found the infamous “woodland Waco compound,” Skatetopia, in Rutland, Ohio, skated with such speed and guts that Cantor was left stricken in awe. He would remember the positive impressions that skaters like Martin left on him when he opened up Control in July.

Before this happened, however, skating would take over Cantor’s life with equal quickness.

“I’d just go to highschool to exist, and then when it got out, it was really time to start my day,” he says.

By 19, he had dropped out of FIU and moved to California, where the skate scene was booming like an army base, in hopes of fulfilling his love by residing in its place of birth.

“I somehow conviced my parents to take a hiatus from school, go out west, establish residency and go to school,” he says. “I didn’t touch school though. I knew that if I went out to Cali to skate, I had to be about it, because skating is as common as tennis out there. Now it’s even crazier, the kids out there are just thirsty, they’re beserk.”

He gained experience and connections by working at 510 Skateboarding, a shop in Berkeley, California that is known throughout the skating community for a tight knit relationship with its clientele. After five years on the West Coast, including stints in Sacramento and Portland, that garnered him sponsors including Satori wheels and DVS, Cantor heard the call of Miami via friends constantly bamming up his cell phone to inform him about the city’s bubbling scene.

In 6 months, he was back popping tricks at his favorite spots in downtown Miami, going up north for the legendary Tampa Am contest/bash, and moving closer to his goal of founding a substantial skate park in his native city. He was glad to be back.

“This is a newer city, so you can be the first guy to land that trick at a spot that’s never been seen. The other best thing about Miami is that everyone who skates here is just dirty. No one’s rolling up to a spot looking like an extra from a P.Diddy video or a Sid Vicious impersonator. There’s no marketable image, it’s just raw,” he says.

When he broke his hand during a session, location scouting for the park became top priority. In one of the many details that Cantor sights as pure luck, his real estate broker, Martin Pinillia, turned out to be an avid skater. Together, they drove around day after day looking for a spot. After months of “groping around in the dark,” in which one deal for a location fell through and chipped their hopes, they fell upon a vacant warehouse downtown that was as a printing press in the 1930s. It was room enough for a 7,000 square foot park and a 2,000 square foot skate shop. It was perfect.

Cantor dressed up in business attire and went to the bank for a loan. Even with good credit, he was denied several times. His parents, who had always been supportive of his skating, agreed to pick up part of the bill, and with the help of numerous friends, including Jason Ranft, who built the ramps, Control Skateboarding was born.

“I really believe that there’s some creative force that’s pushing all of us. I believe that people have their paths, and I also know how lucky I’ve been to have people like my family and friends to help me with the park.”

On weekends Control is filled with skaters of all ages perfecting their art from 11 a.m. until midnight, as they zoom by brightly colored murals of animated characters painted by local artists Dustin Orlando, Francesco LoCastro and Lebo, while Ghostface Killa and LeTigre blasts from the speakers.

Contests are held on average about twice a month, where winners get loaded down in free goods and $200 for best trick. The inhouse shop carries fall lines from labels like Elwood, Aesthetics, Zoo York, and absolutely zero Nike. Charitable events are planned in upcoming months with benefits going to RAIN (Rape, Incest and Neglect) and Adopt a Teacher, and a filming for a video, entitled Odeon, is underway.

“There’s talk of the X-games coming to Miami, but the second we’re out in the real world skating those business people show no love. It’s all about the money baby, it’s not helping out with nathan. I’d burn my park down before I let it turn into some bullshit corporate spot.”

Cantor, who actually lives inside the park with his girlfriend in an upstairs loft, is open to planning future events with local musicians and artists. He can be reached at 305-576-9012. Look for upcoming shindigs in the Life & Art calendar, and help us put Miami on the map for progressive culture.

Hunter Stephenson can reached at hurricaneaccent@hotmail.com.

According to the UM Honor Council, “84 percent of college students believe they need to cheat to get ahead in the world.” This raises a profoundly interesting question: What does it mean to “get ahead in the world?” The manner in which you answer this question may speak volumes about the extent to which society has been reduced to moral penury.
If you’re like Dick Cheney, getting ahead probably means advancing the interests of your immoderately wealthy friends over the interests of an overwhelmed majority of people for whom luck has not been so abundant. Getting ahead might involve running the country like a corporation, overthrowing dictatorships you once supported, and excusing yourself from the jurisdiction of an international court of human rights.
What annoys me about the Bush administration is its fake profession of virtue. The Sept 9 issue of Time reproduced a brilliant April statement by our chief executive officer: “Look, my job isn’t to try to nuance,” said Bush. “I believe moral clarity is important, if you believe in freedom.” The President was responding to a question about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What’s ironic is that aside from uttering scripted platitudes, Mr. Bush has done nothing to prevent beleaguered investors at home from fearing their life savings will be pilfered by his immoderately wealthy friends.
If you’re like the unsung heroes of the world-the schoolteachers and professors, the honest business people, the nurses, the firemen and policemen to name a few-getting ahead probably means saving enough money to send your kids to college so they’ll have an opportunity to end up better off than you. Of course, if your kids pursue careers as unsung heroes, they’ll probably end up inheriting your modesty.
Indeed, what’s particularly disturbing about the plight of unsung heroes is that they’re paid so little for doing work that saves our society
If you want to flex your unconscionable muscle and march around waving the “might is right” banner, then cheating-on your taxes, on your accounts, on your spouse-will probably help you attain your sordid conception of success. You may ruin a million lives along the way, not excepting your own, but chances are you’ll escape unharmed, get ahead and stay ahead.
Conversely, if you’re motivated by contemplation instead of competition, and if you consider cheating out of the question, get used to the phrase “contentment,” and spend a lifetime trashing the torchbearers of moral impropriety. You’ll feel good that you did.
R.S. Jolly is a senior majoring in philosophy.