On April 27 2008, Art Outlet held a FundRazor at Iota Club & Cafe in Arlington, VA. Artist and poet BRASH wrote and performed several poems for the art, which was auctioned off that night. We thank her for her amazing talent and efforts. All poems published below are copyrighted by BRASH. Please contact her, if you like see more.

Terrorist Chic Chick

To Andrea Collins’ Video Stills from the Making of Abu Graib Barbie

It was always Barbie’s foremost passion
To become an Abu Graib to fashion
She misses how Ken could keep her thrashin’
Now torture helps her keep the lash on
Her butt-bare spank-red buttocks
(She always was such a pain for sluttocks)
Just don’t think that she’s a freak—
She’s just the chick at the forefront of terrorist chic.

© April 27, 2008 BRASH

Wise Old Crow

To Nancy MacIntyre’s Old Crow II

Wise old crow
Drawn and drawing
Itself into a bristle
For all the world to show
Amidst the pain and gristle
It’s finally found its cawing.

© April 27, 2008 BRASH

Whatever Reason

To Henrik Sundqvist’s Blood Flowers

Whatever reason
I once professed
For this love
Has long gone muddy.

But then again, this treason
Of the heart at (its) best
Will always smack of
A body’s bloody

Decline into liaison
Of memories laid to rest,
As if we could rise above
Lost love’s quickened study.

© April 27, 2008 BRASH

Bingo!

To Becky Bingo!

Shifting chits upon a grid,
Desire and wistlessness barely hid,
With luck, each has an equal shot—
Which of them will jack the pot?

© April 27, 2008 BRASH

Secret Ingredients of Chicken Soup

To Bono Mitchell’s Lemon and Limes

Maybe some other time
You can impress me with your stealth,
But under the world and weather, I’m
More interested in your chicken soup, a wealth
Of garlic, lemon, and lime—
Guaranteed to improve my health.

© April 27, 2008 BRASH

Cynthia Connolly on the "Creative Mind."
Drift is organized by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities in partnership with the Washington Convention Center. The Artwalk is located on 10th Street (between New York Avenue and H Street, NW).

At the opening reception on Friday, June 15, 2007, Cynthia Connolly, artist, photographer, and Director of the Ellipse Arts Center in Arlington, Virginia Cynthia Connolly gave a powerful speech on the role of artists and the 'creative mind' in the changing real estate landscape of DC in a retrospective look at the region's art history over the past 3 decades.

My name is Cynthia Connolly, and I am the artist who took the photograph of I-80, in eastern Nevada, 11-25-99.  I moved to Washington DC from Los Angeles when I was a teenager in 1981. This city was a different place than it is now.   More recently, I spent a year in Alabama and what I have come to realize is that through the course of the last 25 years DC has changed from a southern city, to a northern city with it’s dying southern roots. I went to the Corcoran School of Art from 1981-1985.  Eventually, in 1986, with a short jaunt of living in San Francisco, I ended up  with a job booking bands and art and performances in a small venue and bar called dc space (district creative space) at the SE corner of 7th and E streets, NW, where a Starbucks can now be found.  I would do my errands of flyer printing and distribution and shopping for lighting supplies and finding replacement tiles for the bar all in stores on 9th street just across from what is now the new convention center.  I did all my errands within a 20 block radius of dc space.  

The city was old and drab, and when it rained the city would smell of rotting wet wood from the old buildings soaked from sagging roofs.  Wild flowers would push thru the cracked and crumbling vacant lots that were turned into renegade parking lots.  I would pick the flowers and bring them back to dc space and make flower arrangements for the dining room.  Downtown dc held such mystery to me:  The past of the 1950’s and the big department stores.  Older people would talk of the good old days of getting dressed up and take a bus downtown to go shopping. I remember going downtown in the early 80’s to take photos.  There used to be cross walks at all the intersections on F street that were diagonal cross walks. There were droves of pedestrians, apparently in the old days, but by the time I was there.. the walk light would blink green and I would be one of perhaps two crossing the diagonal walk. The prominent city colors were grey and black and drab green.  Neon lights could still be found, and I envisioned what surrounded those signs and the glint and gleen of what used to be. I now realize that there is no such thing as revitalized.  It’s really a tide of the people’s interest.  For a while, when the buildings became vacant, in the 70’s, artists moved into buildings downtown. This could also be called revitalized.  It’s a matter of our perspective. One such artist, who could be here today, is Bill Warrell. He lived on top of Whitlows bar and grill. (which has now moved to Arlington – the location in DC is now a Starbucks)  He started dc space in 1976.  He embraced new music and art.  New wave and Jazz. He brought Laurie Andersen here for the first time. Around that same time, the 9:30 club was established on F Street between 9th and 10th NW. Many more artists and musicians moved downtown.

Bill was a DC Arts Commissioner during most of the 1980’s and was an artist on the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation Board, serving with J. Carter Brown. Bill was instrumental along with Georgio Furioso and the DC Office of Planning, they were all pushing for the Downtown Arts District “Overlay Zone” which the city enacted and it became law for new developments.  This brought us the Warner restoration, most of what has happened on 7th Street, F Street, Chinatown, the Pepco Gallery at 8th and G, the Mather Building (Flashpoint), Woolly Mammoth, and Shakespeare theater at Lansburgh. I thought about all this when I was thinking of what I wanted to speak about.  Of course, I would like to thank the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the DC Convention Center for the opportunity to have my work displayed in artwalk.  But I wanted to also thank the many artists who have come before me and saw the great potential of DC and has made it the place we see today. Theses artists include Bill Warrell, who is now an artist and film maker, Carol Blizard Warrell, who is now a special assistant and Deputy Chairman for Grants and Awards for the NEA, Al Nodel, who ran the WPA and is now on the Los Angeles Arts Council, Olivia Georgia, who was the curator of the WPA, and moved to MAP in Baltimore, then on to Snug Harbor in NY, and the Bronx Museum, Steve Oakes, who started Broadcast Arts/Curious Pictures and designed the original Mtv logo and Pee Wee’s playhouse logo in his studio in downtown DC, Mike McCall, Michael Clark, Frank Wright, Joe White, Kim Curry and Chris Gardner, Stevens J. Carter, who recently won a Pollack Krasner Fellowship,  Michael Berman, Judy Jashinsky, all artists.  There was a later generation, Annie A.,who is a photographer and was the executive Director of the WPA/C, Bernie Wandell, Mitch Parker, Jared Hendrickson, Dan Joseph, Claudia Depaul, Jeff Turner, Dan Tredo, Grace Jeffers, Alec Bourgeois, Dot and Charles Steck, Roger Williams, and many many more. It is to them we need to thank. 

One last thing, although artists will of course appreciate the support of such venues as this one, we need to remember how we artists initially think: we look for the unchartered territories and create within and beyond them.  Artwalk could not have been realized but by a creative mind.  Someone or a group wanted to challenge the definition of the vacant lot.  This is, really, a vacant lot. It could be the same old cracked destitute lot that I picked flowers from in 1987. But it isn’t. It is transformed into a space that generates a feeling of freedom and safety.  It’s nothing what a vacant lot in any downtown would conjur in our minds.

It renovates the idea of the vacant lot, and embraces the idea of a common place for all to share.  It rejoices our humanity.  I challenge every artist to not forget and loose touch of our exploratory creative minds in ourselves during our day to day work, and remember that it is our duty to our community to look past what is placed directly in front of us.  Once again, I would like to thank everyone from the DC Convention Center and everyone at the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, who have worked very hard to make this project, and many other projects come to fruition, and to make it possible for artists to live in this city.