On our way to a softball game on a beautiful Ohio summer day in June, we receive a phone call: Kimberly and I have been awarded the bid for the café space at the Wexner Center. My niece, Deonna, says, “We have a restaurant?”

Fast forward 10 weeks until September 12, 2012 (opening day). The restaurant is called Heirloom. Our menu is made from scratch with a core focus on seasonal ingredients creatively prepared. We somehow managed to gather and hire an inspired group of food and service specialists. Grower, farmer, purveyor, and other artisan relationships of our combined restaurant management experience were combined and rekindled. With personal investment and family support, we gathered the funds to develop the concept, test menu items, assemble and train a team to complement our vision. Our guests to Heirloom include students, faculty, staff, and the many visitors to the Wexner Center and Ohio State campus.

We have a restaurant?!

Fast-fast-forward to January 15, 2012:  our first 100 days and counting:

Our menu is still made from scratch and newly revised with an ever-growing accent on local and sustainable sources. Our café staff is continuing to exceed expectations.  New relationships combined with past ones have fruited many new sourcing opportunities including collaborating our efforts with Ecological Engineering Society on our own Wexner Center Chef’s Garden.  We are defining our success, thus far, by purchasing quality ingredients and continuing to employ our talented staff. Our guests have expressed much gratitude for the delicious food served in a timely manner, all facets echoed by local positive media support. Perhaps the greatest reward for us in this business is that we can often forget that this is a business, in the way an artist might get lost in art. Hospitality happens.

We have more than a restaurant.

On the horizon:

February 17:

Dinner premiere at Heirloom in a special event preceding the films Truck Farm and The City Dark, both introduced by director Ian Cheney.

Now thru April:

As part of Ohio State’s SENR (School of Environment and Natural Resources) MENR (Masters in Environment and Natural Resources) project, graduate student Bob Fitchko is evaluating Heirloom and comparing overall site and operations against industry standards for optimal sustainable practices.

By June:

A chef’s garden. Heirloom, an eco-conscious restaurant, will start a garden later this year outside the Wexner Center, providing Heirloom visitors with local, sustainably grown fare. Stay tuned for more information on this garden, which will complement the Wexner Center’s “Green Mission Statement” and its “green” programs focused on sustainability and reduction of environmental impact.

And so much more to come.

John and Kimberly Skaggs
Heirloom
wexarts.org/cafe
twitter @HeirloomCafe

Just after the new year, while most humans were recovering from excess, starting diets, and/or breaking resolutions, thousands of performing arts professionals along with hordes of agents, musicians, dancers, and theater folk from around the globe gathered in New York City for the annual Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) convention, centered at the Hilton midtown. Taken on one level, the insanity of APAP can amount to a glorified outlet mall, with artists and agents plying their wares in hotel conference rooms lit by fluorescent light in front of programmers with empty shopping carts, looking to book their venue’s next season. While there are many redeeming opportunities to be found within APAP, that aspect of it (to me) can seem especially soul crushing. Thankfully, though, there is a parallel universe that operates at the same time as APAP, largely centered much farther downtown at venues like PS122, the Public Theater, LaMaMa, Abrons Arts Center, and Le Poisson Rouge, with mini-festivals like COIL, Under the Radar, American Realness, and Winter Jazzfest staging a plethora of experimental dance, theater, music, and various performative hybrids. Wexner Center Director of Performing Arts Chuck Helm is of course there seeing work; meeting with agents, managers, and artists to plan upcoming residencies and performances; as well as networking with peers on future plans and issues of the field. I attended this year, partially to see new work and partially to see and meet colleagues as part of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) program I’m involved with at Wesleyan University.

From Friday through Monday afternoon I saw roughly 18 different works, bands, and 1 film(!), as well as taking quick trips to MoMA and the Guggenheim before the de Kooning and Cattelan exhibitions closed. Performance highlights included the Builders Association’s Sontag: Reborn at the very-under-construction Public Theater, Tere O’Connor’s Cover Boy at Danspace, Yasuko Yokoshi’s Bell at New York Live Arts, violinist Jenny Scheinman and Nels Cline at Le Poisson Rouge, an excerpt of Bebe Miller’s History (world premiere at the Wex in September), Big Art Group’s Broke House, Cynthia Hopkins’s work in progress of This Clement World, and Jennifer Lacey and Wally Cardona’s Tool Is Loot. I purposefully didn’t see John Jaspers’s Canyon and Mariano Pensotti’s El pasado es un animal grotesco (The past is a grotesque animal), as both are coming to the Wexner Center very soon. While much I saw could safely fall within the category “needs an editor,” and scheduling conflicts made it a physical impossibility to get to some events (Gob Squad, Trajal Harrell), there were several transformative moments throughout the weekend. (Though not live performance, Wim Wenders’s Pina 3D film Monday morning at the IFC was certainly one.) The (sad to me) fact is that while I had to leave to return to Ohio and to work at the Wexner Center, the festivals continued through a second weekend, with highly anticipated work from Meg Stuart, Young Jean Lee, and chelfitsch still on tap. It’s an embarrassment of riches, if you know where to look and can quickly navigate the wilds of the Lower East Side.

– Jerry Dannemiller

Here’s a list of the top ten bestsellers at the Wexner Center Store in the past month. Not seeing your favorite merchandise? You can always vote with your wallet (in the Store or online) or tell us your picks on the Facebook page.

1. WEX “I’m not a papercup” (Currently on sale!)
2. Marcel the Shell With Shoes On: Things About Me
3. Earth Sticker
4. XX XY Blocks
5. The Indie Cred Test
6. Chris Marker: Coreennes
7. Earth shirt
8. Keel’s Simple Diary Volume Two
9. Buckycubes
10. David Smith | Cubes and Anarchy

Kristen Harris and Catherine Lang-Cline.

The creative staff and associates of Portfolio Creative, the nation’s fastest-growing creative staffing and recruiting firm, find much to enjoy at the Wexner Center, including the Off the Grid fundraiser presented by our GenWex group. In this donor profile, Kristen Harris and Catherine Lang-Cline, co-owners and founders of Portfolio Creative, answered questions from Corporate Giving Manager Chris Koenig. This is an expanded version of the conversation that appears in the January/February 2012 issue of the Wexner Center’s calendar of events.

Many people may not know what Portfolio Creative is. Can you briefly explain?

Portfolio Creative’s mission is to make big and small differences in the lives of our talent and clients. We also hope that we can make a difference in the creative community. We connect clients with creative talent in all areas of design, marketing, communications, and advertising. In addition, we provide executive recruiting, payroll, and direct hire services. Every role in marketing or advertising is as unique as the individual who fills it. Speaking the language of the industry and knowing who would be the best fit for a company or project is our specialty—we work every day to connect talented creative people with companies who need their services. We help individuals find work that fits their skills, experience, and goals, and we help our clients accomplish their own goals and succeed in their own careers. That is all a very satisfying way to spend the day!

Portfolio Creative has been featured on Business First’s Fast Fifty list of the community’s fastest growing companies three times now. As a relatively new but rapidly expanding company, how do you balance maintaining your bottom line and giving back in the community?

Giving back provides opportunity and builds a strong community. We actually see the work that we do every day as a way to give back and support our community—when people are working, the economy is strong and businesses can thrive. In addition, it’s always been very important to us to support local organizations, causes, and events, especially within the creative community. If people are able to see something creative, something beautiful, then their minds can be opened to amazing things. From the start we have viewed giving back as an investment in creating and supporting the kind of community where we want to live. We started that investment in year one of our business, albeit on a smaller scale, and plan to keep doing more as our business continues to grows.

Portfolio Creative has many creative employees and contract associates. Can you discuss employee engagement and how that aligns with your philanthropic motivations?

It’s important to support things you believe in, and we believe in creativity. It’s the thread that joins all of our employees, the thing that everyone has in common regardless of position or role. When employees, talent, or clients see our company supporting something they believe in so strongly, it means a lot to them. They understand that we all care about the same things, that we’re all working towards the same cause. That is true engagement.

Your company sponsored Off the Grid in 2011 and plans to sponsor the event again in 2012, when it will take place on April 14. Off the Grid is an opportunity for young professionals to get a taste of what the Wex has to offer. Can you talk about why you have chosen to support the Wex and specifically Off the Grid?

The Wex is an amazing place to see some really incredible art in all forms and mediums. We have always considered it as one of the highlights of the Ohio State campus and a jewel for the city of Columbus. As former employees of Limited Brands, Inc., we completely understand the hopes that Les Wexner had in mind when he helped launch the center, and are honored that we can help support a facility that celebrates art. Off the Grid is the perfect event for us to sponsor because it is a way to celebrate the Wex, art in every form, and the many talented people we work with. And we’ve enjoyed participating in Wexner Center Business Casual Trivia Nights so much, that we’ve recently decided to sponsor the next one.

Do you have any other favorite experiences with Wex programming, past or present?

We each love different things, which is what’s so great about the Wex—there is so much variety and something for everyone. Between the two of us, some favorites have been the Andy Warhol and William Wegman exhibitions, the Double Take gallery talk series, the Paula Hayes and Alexis Rockman exhibitions that just closed at the end of December. We both appreciate exposure to artists we’re not familiar with—it can be so inspiring to discover something new. And we can’t forget the cartoons and pajama party during Zoom. That’s a special favorite for the under-five set!

Anything else you would like to share about the Wexner Center and Portfolio Creative?

The Wex is a true asset to the community in the way that it exposes Columbus and our visitors to a different way of thinking, seeing, and feeling. We’re very fortunate to have something like this in our community, and we are thrilled to be able to support it in whatever way we can.

Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino, 2010)

With 2011 slowly receding into the memory banks and year-end lists filling up websites, newspapers, and blogs, our Director of Film/Video David Filipi and Associate Curator of Film/Video Chris Stults have thrown their hats in the ring and have given us their year-end picks for 2011.

These are films that were released in Columbus, Ohio, during the 2011 calendar year, so if you see a few stragglers from 2010 that’s why.

Have a list of your own? Post it on the Film/Video Facebook page.

Without further ado:

David Filipi: A Top 20

My top five are ranked; the rest are in alphabetical order.

1. Melancholia (Lars von Trier)
2. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
3. Hugo (Martin Scorsese)
4. Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino)
5. Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzman)

In compiling his year-end lists for the Chicago Reader, the great Jonathan Rosenbaum often paired films linked by a shared theme or other property. For me, Melancholia and The Tree of Life are thrillingly ambitious contemplations of our existence separated by completely different philosophies. For Malick, it’s enough that we existed. For von Trier, that we existed means nothing. Hugo, too, is ultimately, about a death, an ending, a last gasp. It’s hard to imagine any director other than Scorsese making the film.

Regarding Le Quattro Volte and Nostalgia for the Light, I wonder: A) if most local critics were scratching their collective heads when they saw these titles on nearly all of the cumulative top ten lists from around the country, and B) if they realize these films actually played in Columbus this year, and C) if curiosity will inspire them to track down the films to see what they missed.

13 Assassins (Takeshi Miike)
The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausecu (Andrei Ujica)
Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)
The Descendants (Alexander Payne)
Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life (Joann Sfar)
The Interrupters (Steve James & Alex Kotlowitz)
Keyhole (Guy Maddin)
Marwencol (Jeff Malmberg)
Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)
Moneyball (Bennett Miller)
Putty Hill (Matt Porterfield)
The Robber (Benjamin Heisenberg)
Terri (Azazel Jacobs)
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
White Material (Claire Denis)

Best Installation

The Flight of the Tulugaq (André Guerreiro)
The Mirrored Curtain (Lori Felker)
Soft Palate (Martin Arnold)
Trypps #7 (Badlands) (Ben Russell)

Best Re-releases

Charlie Chaplin Retrospective (Janus Films)
Onibaba (1964) & Kuroneko (1968) (Kaneto Shindo)
On the Bowery (Lionel Rogosin, 1957)
Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1975)

Best Films Unfortunately Forced to Watch Online

The Black Power Mixtape 1967–75 (Goran Hugo Olsson, 2011)
Cocksucker Blues (Robert Frank, 1972)

Best TV

Boardwalk Empire (Terence Winter)
Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes)

Best “How is this not a Cult Classic” Screening

The Ship of Monsters (Rogelio A. Gonzalez, 1960)

All I can say about this one is you were either at the Wex on January 14 or 15 or you weren’t. Robots, singing cowboys, scantily clad aliens, and some sad-looking monsters.

Chris Stults: Blackjack!: 21 favorite films that played in Columbus in 2011

2011 was a great year for moviegoing in Columbus, with many of the most significant recent films from around the world passing through town. Unlike the deluge of year-end film lists that seem to only acknowledge feature films that had expensive marketing budgets or “for your consideration” award campaigns, this list of highlights from my local moviegoing year indicates the diverse spectrum of films being produced today: feature films, documentaries, big budget productions, personal artists’ films, short films, works made on 35mm or 16mm film, works made on video, works made in 3D, films that can only be performed live, etc.

Some played at multiplexes. Some played at independent theaters like the Gateway or the Drexel. But 13 of the 21 films on my list played only at the Wexner Center—often for only one or two shows. It does take a certain amount of nimbleness and adventurousness to discover the best film playing in town on any given night, but those extra efforts are often handsomely rewarded when you explore less-traveled cinematic paths and discover something truly extraordinary. Here’s hoping that 2012 provides a similarly bountiful array of cinematic experiences! And if you haven’t seen (or heard of) some of the films on this list, many of them are now (or will soon be) available on home video and are well worth tracking down.

1. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
2. Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)
3. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
4. Film for Invisible Ink, case no. 323: ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (David Gatten) [short]
5. Putty Hill (Matt Porterfield)
6. In the Absence of Light, Darkness Prevails (Fern Silva) [short]
7. Let Each One Go Where He May (Ben Russell)
8. Double Pipes (Bruce McClure) [projector performance @ Skylab – 09.24.11]
9. Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes) [TV miniseries]
10. Le quattro volte (Michelangelo Frammartino)
11. Tin Pressed (Dani Leventhal) [short]
12. Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)
13. Cry When It Happens (Laida Lertxundi) [short]
14. Hugo (Martin Scorsese)
15. Marwencol (Jeff Malmberg)
16. Keyhole (Guy Maddin)
17. The Arbor (Clio Barnard)
18. Cold Weather (Aaron Katz)
19. Of Gods and Men (Xavier Beauvois)
20. These Hammers Don’t Hurt Us (Michael Robinson) [short]
21. Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin)

Favorite Performances

Julie Sokolowski, Hadewijch
Ameena Matthews, The Interrupters 

Underrated

Crazy, Stupid, Love 

Overrated

Midnight in Paris

Most Pleasant Surprise

Night Catches Us
Rango
Winnie the Pooh 

Favorite Rerelease

The Soft Skin (François Truffaut, 1964)

Most Enjoyable Communal Screening Experiences

Alamar (Pedro González-Rubio)
The Ship of Monsters (Rogelio A. González, 1960)
13 Assassins (Takashi Miike)
David Gatten retrospective

Two extraordinary films to look out for in 2012

House of Pleasures (Bertrand Bonello, 2011)
Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan, 2006-2011)

Medianeras (Jan 6)
New York Times

Octubre (Jan 7)
National Public Radio

In Between Days (Jan 12)
New York Times

A Useful Life (Jan 13- 14)
New York Times

Man Push Cart (Jan 19)
Roger Ebert

Granito: How to Nail a Dictator (Jan 20- 21)
About.com

Silent Souls (Jan 21)
New York Times
National Public Radio

Weekend (Jan 24)
New York Times

Lamerica (Jan 26)
New York Times

Chico & Rita (Jan 28)
The Guardian
Hollywood Reporter

House of Pleasures (Feb 2)
New York Times

Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (Feb 4)
Roger Ebert

Wanda (Feb 9)
New York Times

The Forgotten Village (Feb 9)
New York Times

Milk and the Land (Feb 11)
New York Times

Earthwork (Feb 11)
National Public Radio

El Bulli: Cooking in Progress (Feb 14)
New York Times

The Crusades (Feb 16)
New York Times

Sleep, My Love (Feb 18)
New York Times

Letters from the Big Man (Feb 24- 25)
New York Times

Red Desert (Feb 28)
Village Voice

The end of the year means many things to many people, but most of all it means lists. We aren’t immune to list-making, and starting today our curators will be taking a look back at 2011 and picking a few of their favorite things. Today we kick things off with Director of Film/Video David Filipi’s and Associate Film/Video Curator Chris Stults’s selections of notable DVDs and books. We’ll be posting more lists as the year draws to a close, so keep your eyes on the blog and our Facebook page for updates.

Chris Stults:

Books

For film lovers: Devotional Cinema (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2003)
The most explosive and expansive stocking stuffer imaginable! This tiny volume, written by one of the most sublime filmmakers of our time, contains a vast amount of insight and wisdom about cinema and art. Dorsky primarily references films by Dreyer, Ozu, Antonioni, and Rossellini, but these slim 48 pages offer an even broader guide to becoming a mindful film viewer and to experiencing film as a transcendent art.

For kids (of all ages): Marcel the Shell with Shoes On: Things About Me (Jenny Slate & Dean Fleischer-Camp, 2011)
One of the hits of the just-past Zoom: Family Film Festival and a YouTube sensation, Marcel the Shell arrives in book form! With lovely illustrations, the book contains favorite jokes from the videos as well as brand new ones. The book also provides parents with an opportunity to imitate Marcel’s distinctive voice. (If you’ve never seen the Marcel the Shell videos, click here.)

For those who like to linger: Nox (Anne Carson, 2010)
Containing poetry, collage, letters, and translation of a Latin poem by Catullus, Nox is more of an object than a book. Made in response to her brother’s death, Carson’s book is an elegant, dense memorial that draws the reader in and makes the experience of reading slow down. You slow down to study the words, images, tones. You slow down to experience time. You slow down to savor. You slow down to remember.

For those who want something you can’t find on Amazon: Prism Index magazine issues 1 & 2
These lovely multimedia magazines, created in a limited edition of 500 copies with handmade silkscreen covers and sewn bindings, contain writings, drawings, a DVD of films, and a CD of music. Compiled with love by Columbus native Jeff Bowers, each volume encompasses a diverse and enticing range of artists, writers, and filmmakers. Many of the names (which include Abigail Child, Azazel Jacobs, Bill Plympton, Jay Duplass, Jay Rosenblatt, Mike Kuchar, Sam Green, Stephanie Barber, Su Friedrich, Tomonari Nishikawa, Virgil Widrich, and others) will be familiar to frequent Wexner Center patrons.

DVDs

Fishing with John (John Lurie, 1991)
Somehow, even with a DVD release by the Criterion Collection, this 6-episode TV series has never developed a cult following of the size that it deserves. The show is a dry parody of fishing shows, with musician (The Lounge Lizards) and actor (Stranger Than Paradise) John Lurie as the host. Each episode saw him with a different guest (Jim Jarmusch, Tom Waits, Willem Dafoe, Dennis Hopper, and Matt Dillon) as they encountered often subtly surreal situation that upend television conventions, blending fiction and documentary in sly ways.

Henry Hills: Selected Films 1977‒2008
Released on John Zorn’s label, Tzadik, this DVD offers a wonderful opportunity to discover some of veteran experimental filmmaker Henry Hills’ finest work. Full of virtuoso editing and resonant meanings, Hills’ films make it clear that he was working in New York art scenes simultaneously with Zorn’s musical improvisations and the Language poets. You can see the music, poetry, and film scenes of downtown NYC in the 1980s in Hills’ collage film Money, with appearances by Abigail Child, Fred Frith, Arto Lindsay, Christian Marclay, and John Zorn, among others. 

Scott Walker 30 Century Man (Stephen Kijak, 2006)
Scott Walker has been one of the most original and elusive musicians of the past decade. This documentary, one of the most vital music docs in recent years, not only offers a rare glimpse of Walker, through interviews and footage of him in the studio recording his monumental 2006 album The Drift, it also features an amazing sequence where some of Walker’s more notable fans (including David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker, Brian Eno, and Radiohead) listen to Scott Walker’s music and comment on both the music and their own personal relationship to it.

Something Wild (Jonathan Demme, 1986, blu-ray)
This new edition by the Criterion Collection allows one of the defining (and genre-busting) films of the 1980s to finally receive its due.

David Filipi:

Books

Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War (J. Hoberman, 2011)
J. Hoberman’s book on American Cold War cinema occupies an unfortunately rare spot in today’s film book market: it’s a rigorous, meticulously researched cultural history that can be enjoyed by enthusiasts as well as academics. I found myself keeping a list as I read, noting all of the films I wanted to see or revisit.

Meta Maus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus (Art Spiegelman, 2011)
If you think you already have Maus sitting on your shelf and can skip this latest version, think again. Meta Maus is Spiegelman’s exclamation point on a large part of his life spent answering questions about perhaps the most groundbreaking graphic novel ever created. Inside you’ll find essays, interviews, examples of other works, biographical information, notes, sketches, and a digital version of the epic that allows you to search more easily for specific images, words or passages.

Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design (Jennifer Bass and Pat Kirkham, 2011)
Don’t judge this book by its cover. It looks like a well-designed coffee-table book on the outside, but on the inside Saul Bass is a rigorous study of the life and work of one of the 20th-century’s great graphic designers. Although he worked in numerous fields, Bass is best known for his unforgettable opening credit sequences for films including Psycho, Vertigo, Carmen Jones, Spartacus, and The Man With the Golden Arm.

 Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: “Lost In The Andes” (Carl Barks, 2011)
Fans of the great Carl Barks, creator of Uncle Scrooge and scores of influential Duck stories, can rejoice! Although there have been numerous reprints of his work over the years, Fantagraphics has delivered the first volume in what promises to be a historic series of high-quality reprints of all of the Barks stories. Barks has influenced a diverse array of artists, ranging from George Lucas to Bone creator Jeff Smith, and his popularity has always been even greater throughout Europe than in the United States.

Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Vol. 1: “Race to Death Valley” (Floyd Gottfredson)
Although not as celebrated today as contemporary Carl Barks, Floyd Gottfredson created a newspaper strip that placed the internationally recognized animated cartoon star into a long-running, action-packed serial that set the stage for the Disney print comics to follow, including Barks’s Duck stories. This version from Fantagraphics is lovingly reprinted and first-rate in every way.

DVDs

Carlos (Olivier Assayas, 2010)
Olivier Assayas’s Carlos was one of the great films of 2010, but most American audiences were forced to see the shortened, three-hour version of the life of terrorist Carlos “the Jackel.” When we screened it at the Wex, we presented the full five-and-a-half hour version, and it’s this version that the Criterion Collection has released. The running time may appear formidable but Edgar Ramirez’s seductive performance, along with Assayas’s masterful use of music, violence, and sex, makes it seem much shorter than many films a fraction of its length.

Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1932)
Island of Lost Souls has always been one of my favorite pre-Code horror films, and it remains refreshingly creepy, even shocking, in the present day. What really makes this Criterion release for me, however, are the extras, especially the thoughtful interviews with former Devo bandmates Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale. These aren’t tacked on extras. The pair’s comments on the film that inspired the name of their first album (Q: Are We Not Men? A: We are Devo!) are a real treat for fans of both the film and the band.

Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzmán, 2011)
Patricio Guzmán’s moving documentary essay is not only one of the best films of the past year but also one of the great docs in recent memory. As in past films such as Battle for Chile, Guzmán examines the history and legacy of the brutal Pinochet regime, this time ruminating on the search for the remains of Pinochet’s victims buried in the barren Atacama desert, home to one of the world’s most important observatories where astronomers search the heavens for celestial bodies.

The Quintessential Guy Maddin! 5 Films from the Heart of Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, 2010)
Zeitgeist Films gives Canadian maestro Guy Maddin’s the home video treatment he deserves with this box set of five of his feature films (including a remastered version of Careful from 1995) and a slew of terrific extras including audio commentaries by Maddin, a documentary on his early career narrated by Tom Waits, a selection of shorts, imagined audition reels, and more. If only My Winnipeg was available on DVD/blu-ray.

Raffaello Matarazzo’s Runaway Melodramas (Eclipse Series 27) (Raffaello Matarazzo, 1949‒1955)
I was excited about this Criterion box set release, through their Eclipse label, for the simple reason that I was familiar with the work of Italian director Raffaello Matarazzo by name only. Matarazzo was famous for a series of entertaining, high melodramas created at a time when Italian neorealism was captivating the film world. I’m looking forward to working my way through the entire set.

Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975)
I’m not sure what would be more interesting: someone that would GIVE Salo as a Christmas present or someone that would ASK for Salo as a Christmas present.

(Pictured: Shelly Casto’s daughter, petting Jesse)

Artist Michael Mercil’s Virtual Pasture will be coming to an end this Monday, December 5 in a brief closing ceremony, weather permitting, at 3 PM in the meadow outside the center, featuring all 13 sheep in the flock. (That’s up from three sheep when the project started two years ago.) The free public event will also include music (Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze, of course), an auctioneer performance, and refreshments. Laptop “sweaters” and iPad “mittens” from the wool of the sheep will be available soon in the Wexner Center Store. Shelly Casto, the Wexner Center’s director of education, weighs in about her (very personal) experiences with the project:

It has been my honor over the past few years to help artist Michael Mercil realize his vision to bring a discussion of the pastoral back to this profoundly urban portion of Ohio State’s campus. Over the course of this project, he has raised his family of petite Shetlands on a bucolic organic farm and treated his charges to monthly outings to Columbus and the Wexner Center in order to help educate visitors, students, staff, and faculty about our relationship to the natural world, a relationship we tend to forget we’re a part of. The sheep always seemed to take these outings in stride: munching on the lush grass happily and nonchalantly nuzzling Michael’s giant television screen, which broadcasted their home farm live, 24 hours a day, winter, summer, spring, and fall.

In my personal life, Michael’s project has introduced my own little family into a closer relationship with that bucolic organic farm (a k a Stratford Ecological Center). My husband and I had been aware of Stratford, but we had not properly treasured this place before Michael’s sheep moved in, and we had the impetus to follow along.  Since that time, my son has spent two summers at Stratford’s farm camp and has declared it one of his favorite places. It’s quite a compliment when a 10-year-old boy chooses a second week of farm camp over the Wexner Center’s highly coveted Animated Game Design course! He frequently talks about one of the matrons in Michael’s flock (Jesse) who grew up as a house pet and is particularly comfortable with human interaction. When I attended farm camp this past summer with my 5-year-old daughter, this particular sheep was set up in a pen close to the entrance area of the farm as a sort of welcoming committee. Unlike her daughters who would run from and bleat at anyone entering the pen, Jesse would patiently enjoy the eager pats of the no fewer than 40 preschoolers in our group. I realized that not only had Michael’s project provided education to those students on campus who had never seen a sheep before, but it had also provided a very valuable entry point of human-animal connection for visitors to Stratford. From Jesse, they move on to picking their own vegetables, milking the goats, feeding the pigs and turning the cows out to graze. Along with these chores, my daughter and I also enjoyed our “magic spot” in the woods, creeking, jumping on hay bales in the barn, picking blackberries, catching butterflies, baking bread, gathering eggs, and chasing down goat escapees. Definitely memories I’ll cherish.

Thank you, Michael, for bringing us a little closer to those agricultural roots that we all have in our ancestral past but that most of us have lost.

Zoom is fast approaching, bringing terrific all-ages films at incredibly affordable prices, free family activities, and much more. This year’s assortment of entertaining and acclaimed movies ranges from classic comedies to contemporary animation. On Saturday, Zoom goes to the zoo, with animals “starring” in all five film programs. In addition to the great films, kids and families can enjoy hands-on crafts, our free Saturday morning breakfast and pajama party, and a Saturday afternoon ice cream social. Check out the preview, made by our friends at Spacejunk Media, and mark your calendars for December 1-4.

Karen Lewis is an Assistant Professor in the Architecture Section of of Ohio State’s Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture.

Diller Scofido + Renfro’s practice operates at the intersection of technology and landscape. Their design work explores the tension between what we experience physically in space, versus what we perceive with our eyes. Views, media, and perspective work together in their design projects to challenge our preconceptions of what is architecture.

As an architect, I’ve studied Diller + Scoffidio’s projects throughout my career. As an undergraduate I was introduced to the Slow House, an unbuilt project sited on a dramatic cliff overlooking the ocean. The house simultaneously curves and rises through the landscape, slowly revealing the dramatic ocean view through a carefully curated procession of views.

This curiosity toward view, technology and landscape was further explored in their proposal for two projects that captured our imaginations in the early 2000’s. The Eyebeam Museum of Art & Technology, which uses a folded surface to separate and connect museum visitors from institutional operations. A large-scale monitoring “bug” climbs and scans the museum façade cycling information back into the museum’s ‘nervous system.’ In the Blur Building, Diller Scoffidio + Renfro move away from technology as a device that attaches to architecture, but instead leverage its abilities to create architecture. Rather than scan the surface, the Blur Building uses intricate technological detail to create the building envelope through a cloud of fog and water vapor that enshroud the visitor.

The Institute of Contemporary Art transforms the way we see Boston Harbor. The computer lab hangs precariously over the water, pitching the viewer down to the ocean below while the room-sized elevator lifts viewers through the mechanical operations of the building, changing the building façade as it rises and falls.

The High Line, a collaborative project with Field Operations, continues to intersect landscape, technology and view, developing curious moments of watching the city below, or hovering over the High Line’s constructed meadows and rain gardens.

Hear from architect Elizabeth Diller, a founding member of innovative and highly respected interdisciplinary design studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in the 2011 Glimcher Lecture, Monday, November 21.