Stories from Summer Vacation: Emily Roehl Brings "Nature's Nation" to Austin on Friday

Today's story comes from Ph.D. student Emily Roehl, who shares a glimpse of her Master's thesis in a new artist book coming to Austin this Friday.This summer has been like so many summers before it: full. For the past four years I have taught reading classes to students ranging from Kindergarteners to retirees, and I stay busy in my “downtime” with (what else?) part-time jobs. But for the past two summers, I have managed to squeeze in a little independent artist book publishing, and this summer—today, in fact—I am busily preparing for the release of my fifth book.Previously on this blog, I have shared glimpses of the work I have done with Mystery Spot Books, an independent artist book publishing venture based in Austin and Minneapolis that produces small run artist books that explore ideas of land, site, history, tourism, and American material culture. Our fifth book, second eponymous, is Mystery Spot 2: Nature’s Nation, and it features the work of seven artists from Austin, Omaha, and Minneapolis. Last May, we successfully Kickstarted the project, raising funds through individual donations to print the book, and over the past week we have unveiled the finished product at launch events in Minneapolis and now Austin.[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/47110982 w=500&h=283]This book holds a special place in Mystery Spot Books’ growing catalogue for me, because this is the first time that portions of my Master’s thesis have appeared in print. My thesis is a multimedia project created on Prezi, and it has only lived in digital form over the past two years. In Nature’s Nation, I resurrect (so to speak) sections of narrative from the thesis about my grave, a plot of land I happen to own in rural Nebraska on the site of my great-great grandfather’s homestead. There’s nothing quite like death (one’s own, especially) to get the artistic juices flowing, and in a piece appropriately titled “six feet,” Chad Rutter and I pair words and images to communicate the range of attachments, positive and negative, that assemble at a site as emotionally charged as one’s own grave.The most exciting thing about this book, however, is the amazing work contributed by the participating artists. All of our previous titles feature the work of Chad Rutter and myself. This is our most ambitious project yet; this time around, we are thrilled to present the work of Caleb Coppock, Paula McCartney, Kate Casanova, Lex Thompson, and Pamela Valfer. Placing all of this work in the same volume provides multiple perspectives, conceptual and aesthetic, on the landscape. Plus, the work is completely gorgeous.

Kate Casanova, from "Floating World"

To get a closer look at the new book and to peruse other Mystery Spot Books titles, join Emily at grayDUCK Gallery in South Austin on Friday, August 17 from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. Drinks and desserts will be served, and books will be available for purchase.

Stories from Summer Vacation: Carrie Andersen Explores the Icelandic Frontier

Our next summer story comes from Carrie Andersen, who spent two weeks road tripping abroad:The highlight of my summer was a trip I took to Iceland with one of my best friends, a fellow former high school teacher with whom I share a love for Jim Carrey movies and karaoke rooms. The two of us have taken a trip together every summer since 2009, previous destinations being Australia, the UK and Ireland, and Alaska. This time, we spent two weeks driving Iceland's Ring Road, a highway that runs around the entire circumference of the country, which is about the size of Ohio.After a brief misstep with our rental car that sent us careening into a ditch on a dirt road (one of our wheels detached from its axel and left our car pigeon-toed and thus undriveable), we took one of the most geologically diverse road trips I could have imagined. This was no Kerouac-style jaunt back and forth across the great plains: our route took us through winding fjords, comfortable walking paths surrounding craters, active volcanoes, steam vents, hot springs, sulfur pools, mountains, glaciers, moss-covered lava fields, farmland, and jagged cliffs. It’d be impossible not to feel the sublime terror and awe at the landscape (and, needless to say, I exhausted my camera's memory card trying to capture the scenery - you can see my feeble attempts below).

Even after such an inauspicious vehicular start, the trip was somehow very relaxing, to my pleasant surprise. Listening to the always fitting sounds of Bruce Springsteen, the Steep Canyon Rangers, New Order, Echo and the Bunnymen, and Justin Bieber, we often drove without speaking, lost in thought about what we were seeing and wondering how the initial visitors to Iceland a thousand years ago might have reacted upon seeing such awesome, but as yet undiscovered, geological formations. What a frontier to traverse, especially without the benefit of a mostly functional Hyundai SUV.Although our journey was largely macroscopic (we did not have the luxury of time, so we hopped quickly from place to place), I could have spent more time in a town called Seyðisfjörður, nestled in a fjord on the east side of the island. While the drive down the mountains was more anxiety-inducing than I would have preferred - think hairpin turns and a 15% grade all the way down, so we thanked our lucky stars that our brakes still worked - our brief stay there could hardly have been more zen. With fewer than 700 residents, the town is known as a tiny bohemian center inhabited by plenty of artists and local fishermen.Which means, of course, you encounter some colorful and wonderful characters.  We stayed at a hostel run by a man who, upon seeing my companion and I reading quietly in the living room, insisted that we hear some of his favorite music (Avishai Cohen, a bass player from New York) and lit some incense as he discussed with us the ins and outs of the Israeli jazz scene.Needless to say, I can scarcely express what a pleasure it was to chill out in this village for an evening. I hope to somehow rekindle my relaxation as I reenter the bumpy atmosphere of graduate school, but what happens in Iceland might have to stay in Iceland.

Stories from Summer Vacation: "Too Big to Frail: My Banjo Summer," by Dr. Randy Lewis

Enjoy this piece from Dr. Randy Lewis, who writes about playing the banjo this summer:I consider myself a rather dusty, low-rent semi-professional musician. I've been paid to play in clubs over the years, but seldom enough to buy a new pair of shoes, and usually not enough to buy a pair of socks at the Dollar Store. I once played nine straight shows at an outdoor medieval fair with a Pirate band in sweaty nautical attire, which, if you look in the dictionary, is the definition of stupid. However, I learned an important life lesson that day: you can’t please an audience hell bent on mixing funnel cake and beer.Yet I keep plucking away at all things musical in my few moments of freedom, occasionally adding something new to the mix. I'm passable on mandolin, guitar, piano, bass, walking dulcimer, accordion, clarinet, and sax, but only recently came into possession of an old Harmony banjo that became a little summer project. Even for a guitar player accustomed to finger picking, banjo is a strange but wonderful beast. While I was able to teach myself the classic three-finger roll that Earl Scruggs made famous in the 1940s, I really wanted to learn the older technique of "clawhammer" banjo, also known as "frailing". I quickly realized that I needed lessons to learn how to shape my hand into a "claw," before striking down on the strings with my fingernails, alternating melody, rhythm and drone attacks to produce the classic "bum-ditty" pattern. When you do it right, it feels like your fingers are dancing on a tambourine covered in baling wire---and you understand why clawhammer banjo propelled so many rural dances across the American South more than a century ago.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bcO1svqh_Q]A wonderful bit of Steve Martin demonstrating clawhammer

After some lessons from one the best old-time banjo players in Texas (Jerry Hagins at Fiddler's Green), I discovered that even at my age, I wasn't too big to frail. With Jerry's help, I've been clawing away at "Cluck Old Hen," "Big Leg Ida," and other musical relics that Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga will never cover. Also, somewhat dementedly, I've also been working on frailing versions of Led Zep, Jimi Hendrix, and The Meat Puppets. I'm hoping the video of me playing "Kashmir" will go viral and thus immortalize me on Youtube alongside the Segway-riding Chimpanzee and other luminaries of the digital age. (I’ll post it soon).

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPGUIpv-JxI]

I should share one other bit of summer news. I was pleased as punch that a new CD was released from my freak folk band Anvil Salute, a small ensemble that plays somewhat “difficult,” droning, experimental music. I play a rather spaced out accordion with this wild improv band, whose members range across the southwest from LA to Oklahoma. You can hear a sample of the new album on the website of our distributor, Pennsylvania-based Deep Water Acres, which is promoting our new CD entitled "Black Bear Rug."

So that's something non-bookish that I did this summer. Perhaps it doesn't connect directly to my work as an American Studies scholar, but maybe it has an indirect connection of some sort. As someone interested in the role of artists in American society, I love to try on various hats and see what can be learned from inside a particular creative process. It's an experiential kind of learning that I relish, and in the case of frailing, I've already started to ask questions that come out of my old time banjo playing: Where did the songs come from? Why these tunings? Why an open back banjo? How much does frailing connect to African banjo traditions? (the answer: A LOT!) Why the drone string? Did women frail? Why did frailing almost disappear? Why are people recovering this style today? Once you start asking a million questions about the deep weirdness and haunting beauty of old time Americana, you've probably started doing an organic form of American Studies---and that's a pretty cool thing.

Stories from Summer Vacation: Kirsten Ronald Says "Cheese!"

This story from summer vacation comes our way from UT AMS doctoral student Kirsten Ronald:This summer, with coursework finally behind me, I’m mostly reading for orals, which lately has meant long hours learning about trains and roads and race and gender and empire (Yes, I organized my reading thematically, because I’m neurotic like that).  But while reading books is cool and all, it doesn’t exactly fill the stomach, pay the rent, or provide much in the way of human interaction, so a few days a week I put on a hat and some non-slip shoes and go back to my previous life – as a cheesemonger.I monged in DC before I came back to school, but the shop here in Austin puts the one in DC to shame.  Even in the summer, when the heat makes cheese hard to transport, we have upwards of 300 different kinds of cheese, ranging from local goat chevre and hand-made mozz to French Epoisses, Pyrenees Chabrin and (the very tasty) Tarentaise from Vermont.  And while one of the best parts of the job is tasting and sharing high-end cheeses, learning about and caring for them is pretty awesome, too.  Cheeses are living, breathing things, with their own needs, social order, and vocabulary.  They come from different animals, from different parts of the world, and from totally different cheese-making aesthetics and traditions.  And they all have to be treated with respect: blues, washed-rinds, bloomy-rinds, cheddars, tommes, alpine cheeses – they’re all made and aged differently, each likes slightly different temps and humidity, and all require careful handling and clean knives and hands to avoid cross-contamination of molds.  The specialized tools and processes of monging are fun too: cubers, cheese wires, graters, heat wrappers, knob-handled parm knives; the assembly-line of cutting, hand-wrapping, pricing, stocking; rotating commodities and brining olives; checking temps and culling products soon to go bad; and, of course, the guesswork of helping a customer figure out what cheese they got from you last time that was so good but they just can’t remember the name of it.  It’s like being a researcher, assembly-line worker, and detective all in one.

And, thanks to my incredibly knowledgeable fellow mongers and caseophiles, we are constantly getting in new cheeses to taste, learn about, and share with folks.  I really can’t think of a better complement to (and break from) the heady work of academia – and yes, that means that if you know where I work and you’re in the neighborhood, do stop by.  Just make sure you come on an empty stomach.