Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture
by Jonathan D. Katz and David C. Ward
Smithsonian Books

“Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” which was co-curated by Jonathan D. Katz and David C. Ward at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., was the first major museum exhibition in the U.S. to focus on sexual difference in portraiture. In breaking such ground, the Gallery incurred a bit of controversy, which resulted in the pulling of a video by artist David Wojnarowicz that combined Christian and homoerotic images to critique ideas about AIDS and victimhood.

In his introduction to the handsome volume that documents the exhibit, Katz describes the history of AIDS censorship in American art, which found its bellwether in North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, who “repeatedly and aggressively sought to pair homosexuality with AIDS in the context of artistic representation.” Most famously, Helms’s 1988 amendment to a huge AIDS research bill barred the Centers for Disease Control from allocating any of its funding for AIDS education/prevention materials or otherwise “encourag[ing] or condon[ing] homosexual activities or the intravenous use of illegal drugs.”

The bill thus outlawed risk reduction to the two groups most affected by HIV while also conflating AIDS, homosexuality, and drug use in the American consciousness; that this amendment passed by a walloping 94-2 says much about the public’s willingness at that time to quarantine these groups, whether literally or figuratively, as the unseeable “other.”

Ironically, several of the artists Helms most sought to censor, including Mapplethorpe and Wojnarowicz, achieved higher visibility as a result of these witch-hunts—Mapplethorpe particularly is now regarded as one of the most important photographers of the 20th century. In his 1988 Self-Portrait, taken the year before he succumbed to AIDS, the artist winkingly poses as Death; the entire photo is cloaked in black, save for Mapplethorpe’s gaunt face staring somberly at the viewer/critic, and his right hand, which grips a skull-topped cane/scepter.

Because the stunning work in Hide/Seek is reproduced chronologically from the nineteenth century to the present, it becomes apparent that following the 1969 Stonewall Riots and the emergence of a politically empowered LGBT population, images of gay people became less coded and more exuberant almost overnight, no longer relegated to the margins of the canvas.

This exuberance and sexual explicitness reached its zenith in the mid-eighties, by which time artists like Mapplethorpe and Keith Haring were finding mainstream success. Sadly, the first wave of AIDS not only brought the literal death of these and countless other artists, it also killed the public’s willingness to see unabashedly joyful and erotic images of gay people.

Whereas this could have meant an unhappy ending to LGBT art (and to this book), it only meant that artists had to be more clever and symbolic in their depictions of the disease, much in the way they had in previous decades been forced to use code in order to depict homosexuality at all.

One of the most ingenious responses to the public’s unwillingness to look squarely at AIDS came from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ 1991 installation piece, Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), created from a piñata-like spill of colorful, individually wrapped candies weighing 175 pounds—precisely the weight of Gonzalez-Torres’ deceased partner, Ross Laycock, before his body was ravaged by illness.

As Ward observes of Gonzalez-Torres’ installation, “[t]he viewer is invited to take away a candy until gradually the spill diminishes and disappears; it is then replenished, and the cycle of life, death and rebirth continues.” By literally partaking of the work’s brilliant mix of camp, culture, kitsch, and Catholic communion, exhibit audiences, and readers of Hide/Seek, are confronted with complex notions about AIDS, and about life—that it is at once tangible and ephemeral, sweet and sour.

—Brent Calderwood

Copywriting/Editing Clients have included:

• Levi Strauss & Co., San Francisco
  
• Ogilvy Advertising, New York City
• The Princeton Review, New York City
• Doubleday, New York City
• Frameline International Film Festival, San Francisco
• East Bay Express, Berkeley
• WestEd, San Francisco
• A&U Magazine, New York (Literary Editor)
• LambdaLiterary.org (Associate Editor)
• Will Flowers, EdD, author, Assistant Dean of Students SFSU
• Diane Parker, author, Staring Into the Sun
• Locuspoint Literary Journal (Bay Area Editor)
• Amy Butcher, author of Paws for Consideration

“I can’t say enough good things about Brent. After 20 years of writing the story of the African American women in my family, I hired Brent to edit my memoir, Staring into the Sun. He came highly recommended. It was important to me that my complex history be clear and error-free, and Brent’s warmth, sensitivity, and intelligence, even about cultural details, helped that happen. I feel confident now that I’m sending a beautiful, professional-looking mansucript to agents and publishers.”
—Diane Parker, Author

“Brent Calderwood provided valuable expertise for the creation of my Web site and portfolio. I am especially grateful for his careful assistance regarding translating my French into English that was correct and also eloquent. As a result, I am now employed by a very prestigious architecture firm in Switzerland!”
— Jérôme Mendes de Leon, Architect

CLICK HERE FOR FULL LIST OF PUBLICATIONS

SAMPLE WORK:

2008: Daily e-blasts, web copy, and external communications for the Frameline Film Festival.

2011: Web writing, editing, and consulting for  Swiss architect Jérôme Mendes de Leon.

Year in Review: Asleep at the Wheel

Despite all the Glee-tastic gay-youth storylines and popular campaigns that claimed we’re “Born This Way” and “It Gets Better,” 2011 may have been the year that the LGBT community forgot what it really means to grow up gay.

On September 19, 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer (pictured center) hanged himself outside his suburban Buffalo home, almost a year to the day that the ubiquitous It Gets Better YouTube campaign began its mission of using webcams to offer solace and hope to queer kids contending with bullying and violence. As the year crawls to a close, the It Gets Better Project has generated more than 26,000 YouTube videos, including one by Rodemeyer himself, just months before he claimed his own life…[more]

Announcing the launch of the Bay Area issue of LOCUSPOINT, a journal founded by Charles Jensen of Lethe Press, who invited me to be guest editor.

This issue features new and exciting work from Brenda Hillman, Dan Bellm, Brian Teare, Randall Mann, Michael Montlack, Kevin Simmonds, Catharine Clark-Sayles, and many, many more!

LOCUSPOINT is a poetry journal whose mission is to spotlight different regions of the country in each issue in order to explore the rich synergism and magic that occurs in literary communities.

Here is an excerpt from my introductory essay:

“…By 1955, the San Francisco Renaissance was in full flower. Poets Kenneth Rexroth and Madeline Gleason were busy ringleading a community of Beat and avant-garde poets that included Diane Di Prima, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Denise Levertov, Kenneth Patchen, Phillip Whalen, Dick McBride, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, and for a short time, Jack Kerouac…”

 

Click HERE to read the Bay Area issue of LOCUSPOINT.

     [For a complete list of publications credits, visit Publications under the Pages heading]

COMING SOON

• Saturday, October 13, 2012 · 7:15-8:15 pm
  HomoPoetic: A Night of Gay Poetry @ Lit Crawl
  F.S.C.  Barber – 696 Valencia St. @ 18th St.
  San Francisco,  CA
  Reading for GuyWriters collective, featuring Kevin Killian, Brent Calderwood, Andrew Demcak, James J. Siegel, and Baruch Porras-Hernandez.

RECENT

• Tuesday, September 18, 2012 · 6:00pm - 7:45pm
  Divining Divas @ the SF Public Library
  100 Larkin St. @ Market St.
  San Francisco,  CA
  Reading for the new poetry anthology Divining Divas: 100 Gay Men on Their Muses. San Francisco Bay Area contributors to the anthology include DA Powell, Randall Mann, Kevin Killian, Kevin Simmonds, Christian Gullette, James J. Siegel, and Brent Calderwood

• Thursday, September 20, 2012 · 7:00pm - 9:00pm
  Books Inc, Castro
  2275 Market Street @ Sanchez Street
  San Francisco,  CA 94114
  Reading for the new poetry anthology Divining Divas: 100 Gay Men on Their Muses. San Francisco Bay Area contributors to the anthology include DA Powell, Randall Mann, Kevin Killian, Kevin Simmonds, Christian Gullette, James J. Siegel, and Brent Calderwood

• Friday, July 27, 2012 · 7:00pm - 9:00pm
  Brent Calderwood @ San Francisco Queer Open Mic
  Museum of Performance and Design (Civic Center Veteran's Building)
  401 Van Ness Avenue 4th Floor Suite 402.
  San Francisco, CA
  Featured reader/performer at the San Francisco Queer Open Mic. Sign-up starts at 7:00pm,

• Friday, June 29 · 7:30pm - 9:00pm
  Reading for Bloom Magazine
  Books Inc, Castro
  2275 Market Street @ Sanchez Street
  San Francisco,  CA 94114
  Bay Area writers Daphne Gottlieb, Brent Calderwood, Yinka Rose Reed-Nolan and Cheryl Dumensil read poetry and nonfiction from the newest issue of the lit journal Bloom, which Edmund White calls "The most exciting new queer literary publication to emerge in years." The evening will be dedicated to Adrienne Rich, who contributed work to two issues of the journal.  7:00pm-9:00pm. Free. (415)864-6777.

• Saturday, July 7  · 6:30pm - 7:30 pm
  Beast Crawl: The East Bay Lit Crawl
  33 Grand Ave. @ Broadway
  Oakland,  CA
  Featured reader, along with Lisa Martinovic, Bonnie Kwong, and Kim Shuck. Beast Crawl on Facebook.

• Saturday, May 26, 2012 · 7:00pm - 9:00pm
  Frank Bette Center for the Arts
  1601 Paru @ Lincoln
  Alameda,  CA
  Featured reader at monthly 4th Saturdays Poetry Reading Series, hosted by Jeanne Lupton.

• Wednesday, April 18· 8:00pm - 10:00pm
  Smack Dab Reading Series
  Magnet
  4122 18th Street @ Castro Street
  San Francisco,  CA 94114
  Featured reading and performance by Brent Calderwood. Monthly reading series/open mic in the heart of the Castro, hosted by author-performance artist Kirk Read. Open mic signup starts at 7:30pm, 15 slots per night, 10-15 minutes for the night's featured performer. Free. (415) 546-6300

• Saturday, January 21· 5:00pm - 7:00pm
  Homophonic: Songwriter showcase
  Martuni's
  4 Valencia Street @ Market Street
  San Francisco,  CA
  Monthly LGBT songwriter showcase at Martuni's piano bar, hosted by Jeb Havens, Tawnee Kendall, and Derek Schmidt. On guitar with backup from guitarist Leech Haven.

• Friday, August 26, 7:30pm 10:30pm
  Fundraiser for "Big Joy"
  The Phillip Rush Center
  1530 DeKalb Avenue Atlanta, Georgia
  Reading/screening/benefit for the Big Joy Project which is making a film about the late filmmaker, poet, and playwright James Broughton. Join poets, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and avant-garde cinephiles for an evening of spoken word, film and food.

• Sunday, September 4, 5:15pm
  Decatur Book Festival Reading
  Local Authors Stage
  Downtown Decatur, GA
  Reading from upcoming chapbook, winning AQLF Broadside, and other publications.

• Tuesday, September 27, 7:15 p.m
  Poetry Atlanta Reading
  Decatur Public Library
  Decatur, GA
  Reading sponsored by Georgia Center for the Book, hosted by author Collin Kelley.

• Saturday, October 8 · 12:00pm - 2:20pm
  Literary Event at Atlanta Pride
  Atlanta Pride Coca-Cola Stage
  Atlanta, GA
  Local, regional, and national authors, poets, and spoken-word artists kick of Saturday's lineup of culture and music! Readers will include Franklin Abbot, Collin Kelley, Brent Calderwood, and many others.

• Thursday, October 20 · 7:00pm - 9:00pm
  Reading in Conjunction with Graphic Intervention Show 
  Museum of Design Atlanta1315
  Peachtree Street,  Atlanta, GA
  Thursday night reading event at MODA in conjunction with their opening of "Graphic Intervention: 25 Years of International AIDS Posters." Poets and writers will read new pieces inspired by the posters.

by Brent Calderwood (republished by permission from LambdaLiterary)

Last Wednesday it was announced that Philip Levine will be the next U.S. Poet Laureate. The following Saturday, presumably acting on the assumption that working-class poets, or poets in general, enjoy too much popularity and unchecked power, the Huffington Post issued what looked at first glance like a call for impeachment.

But “Philip Levine and Other Mediocrities: What It Takes to Ascend to the Poet Laureateship,” by writer and critic Anis Shivani, is really just a well-written lie. Purporting to excoriate Levine, Sharon Olds, Louise Gluck, and a handful of other U.S. and state poets laureate, it actually performs a neat trick, introducing their poetry—and Mr. Shivani’s vitriol—to a wider audience of newsreaders.

And it’s interestin­g vitriol. But after several well-artic­ulated attacks, Shivani wraps up with a random assault on Billy Collins—and what could be more facile and cliche than attacking one of the most popular and accessible contempora­ry poets in the country? Shivani even uses hackneyed, throwaway phrasing to describe Collins’ poetry as ”intellect­ual masturbati­on of a sort, imaginativ­e game-playi­ng for its own sake”; but isn’t that exactly what Mr. Shivani’s article is? Just a big tease, an excuse to get readers and ratings, an exercise in tagging and search-eng­ine optimizati­on?

All of the poets mentioned in the article, including Levine and Collins, use their laurels and their teaching positions to promote work by poets both more and less canonized than themselves­. What is Shivani using his talent for, besides self-promo­tion masqueradi­ng as outrage?

For reviewers, teachers and critics concerned with aerating the poetic landscape and turning readers on to new, exciting work, it’s imperative to name and laud those unsung writers—h­elp Americans to know them—rat­her than simply attacking, in the most obvious terms possible, the few living poets that most Americans are likely to know.

Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City

by Brent Calderwood

Music and lyrics by Jake Shears and John Garden, book by Jeff Whitty

When potential Broadway backers recently passed on the new musical version of writer Armistead Maupin’s much-loved Tales of the City, San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater snapped it up. And why not? The city that Tales tells of is, after all, San Francisco, which has over the last decade become a new New Haven, the West Coast tryout town for shows like Wicked that need retooling before hitting the Great White Way.

Armistead Maupin’s stories about the inhabitants of 28 Barbary Lane, which debuted in 1976 as a serial in the Chronicle, teemed with enough wacky characters, dropped names, thinly veiled glitterati, and ingeniously overlapping plotlines to spawn the original novel and seven more in the series.

Although later books would explore deeper issues like AIDS, aging, and addiction, director Jason Moore and librettist Jeff Whitty, both from the Tony-winning Avenue Q, have wisely limited their scope to the first two novels, set in the giddy San Francisco of the late seventies. But even that may have been too much for one show to take on.

The first book alone, after all, provided enough material for a six-hour miniseries in 1993. Produced by the U.K.’s Channel 4 and aired on PBS stateside, that Tales garnered record ratings and boasted a spectacular cast, notably Olympia Dukakis as Barbary Lane’s eccentric den mother Anna Madrigal and a relatively unknown Laura Linney as Mary Ann Singleton, the loveable Midwestern naïf whose wide-eyed acceptance of her adopted city’s sybarites provided a powerful touchstone for mainstream audiences.

If a likeable cast and great shots of San Francisco were keys to the 1993 Tales’ success, so was timing. An earlier attempt by HBO had to be shelved in 1982 when the first wave of AIDS dampened the appeal of a prospective series about San Francisco in the throes of the sexual revolution.

Thirty years on, partly as a result of AIDS education, Americans are better acquainted with sex in all its forms—including the trans, bi, and homo varieties—than ever before. In 2011, sex is no longer “too much” for audiences, especially for theatergoers. In fact, it’s no longer enough.

And without shock value to keep audiences in their seats, much less on the edge of them, ACT’s Tales will need some serious retooling if it wants to hit Broadway.

Whoever is cast as Mrs. Madrigal, the moral and dramatic heart of the play, needs to dazzle with star wattage, and although Judy Kaye commands each dramatic scene and solo ballad, her lower register all but disappears in ensemble numbers. One wonders what Betty Buckley, who participated in early workshops for the show, might bring to the role.

Even more problematic are the songs, which suffer from plodding melodic repetition and lack of modulation. “Paper Faces” may be the most memorable ballad in the show, but, like the clever lament “Seeds and Stems,” its witty hook can’t hide the fact that the lyrics don’t effectively advance the plot. Worse still, the up-tempo numbers are uniformly forgettable despite songwriter Jake Shears’ penchant for penning infectious disco/alt-pop hybrids for the Scissor Sisters.

Perhaps most startling of all, the city itself, so important to the story that it’s part of the title, is given an oddly minimalist treatment in the ACT production. No matter if characters are carousing in Pacific Heights, Barbary Lane, or Land’s End beach, the stage remains the same, save for a shag rug here or piped-in fog there.

Intending to evoke the homey Victorian staircases and landings of Barbary Lane, set designer Douglas W. Schmidt instead gives us a labyrinth of stark white fire escapes, so that watching Tales becomes eerily like watching Rent, only with wainscoting and wood where bold messages and signature songs should be.

Out-of-town tryouts have done wonders for countless flagging shows that eventually became Broadway hits, most famously for Hello, Dolly!, thanks to drastic last-minute changes by composer Jerry Herman and the inimitable charisma of Carol Channing. So who knows what the future holds for Tales of the City? In the world of the theater, the right star and a few great songs can turn even the weakest invalid into something truly fabulous.

The Princeton Review, New York, NY                                                       8/06-8/07

Editor:

• Key editor/final eye/co-coordinator for national Off the Shelf project, a book and Web-based template for statewide standardized test forms.
• Edited and wrote K-12 children’s stories, nonfiction articles, test questions, technical explanations of state standards.
• Wrote over 100 pages of original copy, plus gave feedback to all other editors and writers on project.

“This beautiful poem evokes a city landscape lit up with the possibility of new love. But it’s also tense with the speaker’s awareness that this hope may never be realized. In this way ‘The Golden Hour’ captures how love and desire lead us forward, but can also hold us hostage.”

Photographer Daniel Nicoletta Offers Wisdom to a New Generation of Artists and Activists

Daniel Nicoletta began his career as a freelance photographer in 1974, shortly after moving from his native New York to San Francisco.

That same year, Nicoletta met Harvey Milk and Milk’s lover Scott Smith; it was a meeting that would change Nicoletta’s career, and life, forever. The couple hired the nineteen-year-old Nicoletta to work in their camera shop on Castro Street, and he soon found himself running the store. He also assisted on several of his employer’s famously theatrical political campaigns, including the 1977 race that won Milk a seat on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors—and an indelible place in history as one of the first openly gay elected officials in the country.

As a primary visual documenter of the last three years of Milk’s life, Nicoletta has also seen his name added to the historical record. He even recently became a “character” in the Oscar-winning 2008 film Milk: months after serving as an advisor and production stills photographer on the set, Nicoletta was able to watch himself portrayed onscreen by actor Lucas Grabeel. It’s a rare and uncanny honor for anyone still living, especially for one who makes his living behind the lens; even Diane Arbus, one of Nicoletta’s primary influences, was not accorded that particular tribute until long after her death.

Since the 1980s, Nicoletta has concentrated on studio portraits, providing an ongoing record of LGBT culture and history. This record includes rare images of artists and performers whose careers were cut short by AIDS such as Sylvester, Divine, and members of radical San Francisco performance troupes like The Cockettes and Angels of Light.

While Nicoletta’s fame and “importance” have skyrocketed over the past several years, his warmth and humility remain firmly grounded. I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Nicoletta, who had much to say about not only about the life and times of Harvey Milk, but also about the roles of artists and young people living today, in these very different times.

Brent Calderwood: How did you get started as a photographer?

Daniel Nicoletta: I originally started out as a filmmaker. I had won a Kodak teenage movie award when I was 17 in Utica. Filmmaking was my primary creative pursuit, but then after I moved to San Francisco, still photography took the place of moviemaking.

In 1985, after several years of photographing Harvey Milk and the LGBT community, you got your degree in photography from San Francisco State. Why did you decide to go back to school?

The reason I never finished school before was because I got the job in Harvey Milk’s camera store. He and Scott were very pro-education, so they were reticent to let me quit school, but it was very clear that the campaign was on fire… The reality was that there just wasn’t room for it. I permitted myself to drop out and then my life took off and I never looked back for almost ten years.
But I had always held out that I would return to college and get my BA… About this time I met my lover Michael, and now it’s been 28 years that we have been together. He made it possible for me to re-enter school as an adult without having to work simultaneously. I did all studio courses for two-and-a-half years and it was fantastic.

Your photographs from the early nineties of Miss Kitty in angel wings and later in the hospital are so moving. Who was Miss Kitty?

She was an international performance artist. She had worked in many other countries. She arrived on the scene [in San Francisco in the mid-eighties] as a fairly unknown commodity and before long she had enchanted everybody, myself included. And she basically came up to me and said in no uncertain terms, ‘We’re going to work together.’ She enrolled me in her vision, and that evolved into her invitation to document her struggle with the issues of AIDS. That was her direct invitation.

When we did the Angel picture, she was really sick—she could barely make it up the rickety old stairs to my studio. So god bless her for being so driven about doing drag and about being in the visible realm as a creative artist, as a person with AIDS.

When you photograph people living with HIV and AIDS, do you worry about the issue of exploitation?

Even though I’m aware of the possibility of exploitation when there’s collaboration, I’m generally an insider in the first place. Generally there’s a lot of consent. Obviously there’s a challenge in the second phase, when you’re exhibiting. The first phase is creative, but the rest in informed by a mutual trust that will always carry over to those considerations in postproduction that I would never do something that’s distasteful, either to the living spirits of those that are still alive or the deceased spirits of those that have gone on… I’m definitely really big on honor.

You’ve talked a lot in the press about your involvement with the film Milk. Did working on that film change the way you view your career as a whole?

It was ten of the best weeks of my life—it was surreal, and poignant. It was validating because, don’t forget, when I was nineteen I thought I was going to be a filmmaker and move to Hollywood. So here I was finally getting to work on a feature film and it was very much a full circle on that level.  And they were incredibly gracious.

After more than thirty years of doing portraiture and art photography, how do you feel about your photos of Harvey Milk being your most famous work, especially following the success of Milk?

It’s a mixed blessing because it’s helped me achieve the whole arc of my career in a way nothing else could have ever done. It’s accelerated my visibility tenfold—that in and of itself is a gift.

I’m not an ingrate by any means, but at the end of the day, I do do this other work, and a lot of times it has to take a backseat to the diplomacy issues.  What’s ironic is that the circus left town in March [2008]. They went and made their film and delivered their film, but those of us that were primary sources from the Milk family, we continue to have to respond to the culture’s interest in Harvey Milk’s legacy, and it’s a full-time job for many of us.

The only thing that makes it a balanced experience for me is an essential gratitude to Harvey and Scott and their mentorship. So when I reach a sense of frustration about its dominance in my life, the answer that always comes back is, ‘This is what you were being taught for, this is what we had in mind, and it is a kind of activism, and that is what we wanted for you. Here we gave lip service to reaching out to the youth demographic all these years, and now you are actually getting to do it, so buck up.’

What do you say to the young people who see Milk and want to find a way to connect to Harvey Milk’s ideals of personal and political liberation?

There’s a sense of longing that arises from a romanticized view of early queer liberation. It’s a challenge to your generation. That longing has got to be parlayed into your own contemporary struggles because if it’s not, then it traverses the area of sentimentality, and it’s completely out of reach… It can be a source of inspiration, but it can also be a source of dismay—anesthetization in its worse case, or apathy.

If people can foster a sense of engagement from each other without the baggage of obligation, then I think the exciting synergy that is creativity can happen…. It isn’t about how many precincts did you walk, it’s about what is it that you want to do to make a difference, and then, come on, do it!

To learn more about Daniel Nicoletta, visit www.dannynicoletta.com.

Read the full article from the June 2011 issue of  A&U Magazine