AADL 2024 STAFF PICKS: PULP LIFE

PULP LIFE

AADL 2024 STAFF PICKS: PULP LIFE

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AADL 2024 STAFF PICS: PULP LIFE
Games, apps, sports, outdoors, and any other kind of hard-to-categorize cultural and life activities:

Friday Five: The Nuts, Michael Skib, Rabbitology, Zagc, Mazinga

MUSIC REVIEW FRIDAY FIVE

Cover art for the music in Friday Five.

Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This all-singles edition features indie rock from The Nuts, a remixed Michael Skib sci-fi excursion, electronic folk-pop by Rabbitology, techno by Zagc, and fuzz rock from Mazinga.

Our Story: Athletic Mic League's new single, "Made History," traces the Ann Arbor hip-hop group's legacy while namechecking important figures and Black businesses 

HIP-HOP HISTORY MUSIC HISTORY INTERVIEW

The members of Athletic Mic League gather together during a retreat.

Athletic Mic League's Kendall Tucker, Michael Fletcher, Trés Styles, Mayer Hawthorne, Vaughan Taylor, Jamall Bufford, and Wes Taylor. Photo courtesy of Jamall Bufford.

In 1994, seven friends never anticipated they’d make hip-hop history in Ann Arbor and beyond. A mutual love of creating music and playing sports prompted the Huron High School students to form a group that would eventually become Athletic Mic League.

“We weren’t Athletic Mic League then. We were the Anonymous Clique, but we all started going to Trés [Styles’] crib writing and messing around on little beat machines and little recording setups in 1994,” said Jamall “Buff1” Bufford, one of Athletic Mic League’s MCs.

“We didn’t become Athletic Mic League until probably [1997]. Wes [Taylor] came up with the name … so we said, ‘Yeah, let’s go with it.’ We all play sports. We took an approach to writing and practicing like it was training.”

Thirty years later, that disciplined mindset has stayed with the members of Athletic Mic League: Trés Styles, Wes “Vital” Taylor, Vaughan “Vaughan Tego” Taylor, Michael “Grand Cee” Fletcher, Mayer Hawthorne, Kendall “14KT” Tucker, and Bufford.

Now, the group is celebrating its contributions and legacy in a new track aptly titled “Made History.”

Commissioned to write and record the track for the Ann Arbor District Library's Ann Arbor 200 bicentennial project, Athletic Mic League also pays homage to Washtenaw County hip-hop history and Black history in Ann Arbor.

Michelle Hinojosa's "Logcabins" quilted columns at Stamps Gallery honor her family's history of migration

VISUAL ART REVIEW

Michelle Hinojosa standing next to one of her "Logcabins"

Photo courtesy of Michelle Hinojosa.

In April 2023, Michelle Hinojosa presented her thesis exhibition at the University of Michigan's Stamps Gallery. The exhibition, Lime Green Is the Taco Stand, was inaugurated with a poetry event, "Poetry by the Light of the Quilts," where Hinojosa read a series of poems on immigration and the collective feeling of loss that comes with this experience.

Hinojosa returns to Stamps a year later with a new creation, Logcabins. This time, we encounter her work outside the gallery as her log cabin quilts wrap the two columns of the gallery building.

The two colorful quilted columns help the gallery signal its existence amidst the dreary concrete landscape. Hinojosa’s striking quilts use color combinations that play with shades of yellow, green, pink, blue, and orange to create patterns of tesselations. Developed around the unit of a pink square, the blues and yellows of the respective quilts can be seen as stepped borders surrounding the squares to make a larger square motif. However, on closer inspection, a corner of the motif breaks away from this neat enclosure to connect it to the other blocks on the quilt, forming a sense of continuity unique to tessellated patterns.

Friday Five: Mother Night, Younger Dryas, Cracked & Hooked, Aikanã, Battle of the Bits

MUSIC REVIEW FRIDAY FIVE

Cover art for the music in Friday Five.

Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features the many guises of rock from Mother Night, Younger Dryas, and Cracked & Hooked, drum 'n' bass by Aikanã, and emo-indie chiptunes from the Battle of the Bits forum.

Believing in Art As a Saving Grace: "The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry" documents the voices of Michigan writers

WRITTEN WORD PREVIEW INTERVIEW

 The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry

Participants in The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry, from left to right starting at the top: Chien-an Yuan, Kyunghee Kim, Chace Morris, Zilka Joseph, Emily Nick Howard, and Sherina Rodriguez Sharpe.

Chien-an Yuan is an evangelist.

Not the type who's selling you hope in exchange for a monthly tithe but the kind who just wants you to believe—in art and its healing powers; in music and its succor; in poetry and life-giving energy.

The Ann Arbor musician-photographer-curator works not just in words but in deeds—and sometimes, the deeds are words, carefully arranged and expertly recited as is the case with The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry.

The project is a collaboration between Yuan's 1473 record label, Michigan poets, and Fifth Avenue Studios, the recordings division of the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL). 

Named after two high school teachers who inspired Yuan, The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry is a collection of recited poems, documented at Fifth Avenue Studios, with covers created by local artists for each chapter in the series. (Shannon Rae Daniels' watercolors will adorn the first 10 sessions.) All the recordings can be listened to and downloaded free of charge whether or not you have a library card.

The anthology's construction is ongoing—you can listen to Ann Arbor poets Kyunghee Kim and Zilka Joseph so far—but there's an official launch for the project on Monday, December 9, at 6 pm at AADL's Downtown location. Kim will be joined by upcoming Coolidge-Wagner writers Sherina Rodriguez Sharpe, Chace Morris, and Emily Nick Howard, along with Yuan introducing the poets and talking about the project. (Joseph will be at a future Coolidge-Wagner event.)

I sent Yuan some queries about The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry, and his answers were so passionate, revealing, and thorough that they stand alone without my framing questions.

Below is Yuan's testament to the power of art and a brief history of The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry:

Tactile Sensations: Ericka Lopez's "touch" exhibit at U-M's Institute for the Humanities Gallery encourages visitors to feel her art

VISUAL ART INTERVIEW

Ericka Lopez at work in her studio. Photo courtesy of Tierra del Sol.

Ericka Lopez working in her studio. Photo courtesy of Tierra del Sol.

Amanda Krugliak remembers the first time she saw the work of artist Ericka Lopez.

“I was walking a gallery in Chinatown, in L.A., and I saw this work. It just had something undeniable about it,” said Krugliak, curator for the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities Gallery, which is hosting Lopez's touch exhibit. “There’s something incredibly powerful immediately about it. It felt like the kind of work that doesn’t have a motive. There’s no other reason for the work, but the immediate human connection, or something material we respond to. There are a lot of contemporary artists who try to achieve this, and here was this artist that just felt so natural.”

Lopez's tactile textiles and colorful ceramics bristle with textures. She also happens to be blind. After finding out about Lopez’s story, Krugliak made inquiries about bringing the show to Ann Arbor.

Going Nuclear: A new play, "Last Summer," imagines a tense conversation between two physics giants in Ann Arbor

THEATER & DANCE PREVIEW INTERVIEW

Chris Grimm as Fermi, Greg Kovas as Weisenberg

Meeting of the brilliant minds: Chris Grimm as Enrico Fermi and Greg Kovas as Werner Heisenberg in Last Summer. Photo courtesy of Ann Arbor Civic Theatre.

Jim Ottaviani has spent much of his career putting words into the mouths of physics geniuses. Sure, he also used the scientists' own words when penning scripts for graphic novels about Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, and Richard Feynman since Ottaviani's books are always deeply researched.

But for Last Summer, a new play by Ottaviani, he had to imagine the words exchanged during a summer 1939 private gathering at U-M physics professor Samuel Goudsmit's home following a physics symposium in Ann Arbor.

The Summer Symposia had been happening in Ann Arbor since the late 1920s, bringing together the greatest physicists to share ideas. Nobel laureates and nuclear pioneers Enrico Fermi and Werner Heisenberg were at Goudsmit's place that summer 1939 evening, with the former trying to convince the latter not to go back to his native Germany and help the Nazis with their nuclear program. It didn't work: Fermi went on to work for the Allies and Heisenberg returned to his homeland.

Their discussion is the basis for the 20-minute Last Summer, which will be staged by the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre (A2CT) on December 7 and 11 at the Downtown location of the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL).

Loss, Love, and the Ferryman: Ann Arbor author and musician Michelle Kulwicki on her debut young adult novel, "At the End of the River Styx"

WRITTEN WORD INTERVIEW

Michelle Kulwicki and her book At the End of the River Styx.

What happens when the goal you've spent an eternity working toward is finally within your reach, but then you encounter something you want even more?

 

And what if forsaking your long-sought goal also came with an impossible price?

 

In At the End of the River Styx, Zan needs only one more soul to fulfill his obligation to the terrifying Ferryman of delivering 500 souls in 500 years, but the latest soul to walk through his door is unusual. First, this boy, Bastian, does not seem to be entirely dead; and what's more, he sees something in Zan beyond a grim harbinger of doom. 

 

"At the End of the River Styx is a book about grief and about love, about two boys finding themselves at the edge of Death," says Ann Arbor author Michelle Kulwicki about her debut young adult novel. "I think it's really about conquering grief and learning to love again, learning to love yourself, learning to love other people around you."

 

I spoke with Kulwicki about At the End of the River Styx and other creative pursuits.

Friday Five: Whimsical Beats, The Cicada, Isolation Sundaze, Luminous Fridge, History History

MUSIC REVIEW FRIDAY FIVE

Cover art for the music in Friday Five.

Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features lo-fi chill by Whimsical Beats, hyperpop from The Cicada, rampant eclecticism via Isolation Sundaze, modular synths by Luminous Fridge, and political grunge by History History.