Song o’ the Week: “No One Does it Like You” – Department of Eagles

If you like the folky despondent sounds of Grizzly Bear, you should check out Department of Eagles, the side project of Grizzly Bear’s lead singer Daniel Rossen. Though just now showing up on the radar, Department of Eagles actually formed before Grizzly Bear in the fall of 2000. The two ministers of the Department, Fred Nicolaus and Daniel Rossen, met as freshman at New York University where they shared a room. The two spent their college years mixing albums and making a more electronic sound until the band took a hiatus when Rossen joined Grizzly Bear in 2004.

The band is back together again for their third album. “No One Does it Like You” is their first single off their applauded album, In Ear Park. The group has toured around New York and hit up the talk-show circuit, but this live video on the rooftop of a building in New York is an intimate session of a band and their beloved city. And to be honest, the panoramic New York skylines and images of construction workers don’t hurt their Brooklyn street-cred either.

The song jumps right in with a steady beat on the toms and intruding crisp guitar chords. Rossen’s first verse sounds sparing at first and then transitions into a break down chorus that subtly builds. What makes this song so great are the little inconspicuous components that become more noticeable with every listen. Even the oohs and aahs resonating in the last chorus add a further layer upon the skeleton of this seemingly simple song. It’s almost as if the sole purpose of the song is build to the emotional apex when Rossen sings, “No One Does it Like You.” Something about his non-chalance, his sincerity, his accepted defeat after trying so hard, makes me pity and adore him all at the same time. With the message conveyed, the song is finished and degenerates into a finale.

“And in the morning come, you don’t need to be so honest.”

~ Peggy McWeeney

Untailored Fashion: Talk About Weird

This years spring 2009 Paris Fashion week, which just ended on October 5, was taken over by Maison Martin Margiela. You may not have heard of him, but he is now the talk of the fashion world. He has become a novel sensation. Before I tell you about the show, take a look at some of the pictures and the video.

None of the models had faces on the Margiela runway this season. Models strutted with extravagant hair, skin or hair-covered faces, and occasional painted lips. Futuristic and sometimes creepy outfits styled in outrageous shapes popped models off the black background and a whole aura of mystery was created in the morgue where this show was presented.

The show was created to celebrate Margiela’s 20th anniversary and served as a catalog of the 40 collections that preceded it. Margiela has always had a unique style and by bringing peaces together from all his collections he showed us fashion folk that all his collections had a common theme and that even his older designs could still be very modern. As always Margiela also used recycled goods for many of his pieces.

There are rumors that after this show Margiela will retire. So, now that we are all in love with his designs and his fashion concept we may never see from him again. Maison Martin Margiela is somewhat of a fashion ghost. He does not give interviews, and never shows his face at his fashion shows. In fact if you “goggle” him there are no pictures of the designer himself, he wants all the attention to be on his creations.

Margiela shows us what avant-garde and couture fashion truly are. Although he does sell more “normal” clothing in his stores, this show is obviously not using the ready to wear fashion that we are accustomed to. Margiela has designed a show to stretch our imagination and make us rethink our own definition of fashion. He has reminded us that the catwalks serve as museums for designers work and that fashion is truly a form of art. As one of the most mysterious, and extraordinary people in the fashion world, Margiela obviously has a very well defined view of fashion and knows how to express it artistically through his work.

“The most courageous act is to think for yourself. Aloud.” -Coco Chanel

http://www.maisonmartinmargiela.com/en/index2.html

~Amity Paye

SyracuseYou: Katelin DeStefano

(Katelin DeStefano)

Katelin DeStefano is constantly surrounded by art. During our informal interview in the downstairs of her South Campus apartment, she is quick to point out decorative posters by Alphonse Mucha, her favorite artist, while flipping through a book of his work. Upstairs, her own original artwork adorns the walls. “I never sell my own art because I like to keep them for my own record,” she explains.

DeStefano, a junior advertising design major in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, has a concentration in printmaking and brings a West Coast edge to her work. At times reserved, the Lake Oswego, Oregon native explains her passion for printmaking, but belief that a degree in advertising design is more practical since it is difficult to make a living off printmaking. “It’s really a dying art with the digital world coming into play,” she said.

DeStefano said the graphics side of ad design usually appeals to her more than the business side, but it changes from semester to semester. She first became interested in art her freshman year of high school after taking an art class as an elective. Initially interested in fashion, she participated in a summer program at Parsons The New School for Design in 2005. There she studied painting and drawing and decided she no longer wanted to pursue fashion design.

Still, DeStefano looked at Parsons and the Art Institute of Chicago in addition to Syracuse. In regards to Parsons, “I didn’t now if I was ready to be that serious about art,” she said. “Syracuse was the all-around college experience, whereas with Parsons it would be going right into an adult lifestyle right after high school.” She is currently taking a contemplative arts class with Professor Anne Beffel. Beffel invited her to the class, which is on a trial run. DeStefano said the class is comprised of all girls, all great people to work with.

At the end of the semester she will participate in a culminating art show with the class. She explained the show as slow art, an installation of inspirations in everyday life. DeStefano said she hopes to incorporate a bubble machine in some way, since many of her prints contain bubbles. “I feel like no one can be sad when they’re looking at bubbles,” she said.

Her inspiration is best described as eclectic. “I definitely look back on the 20s, 60s, 70s, Art Nouveau psychedelic art and pop art,” said DeStefano. “Anything really graphic is where I’m going right now.” Her current methods include photographic monotype, aluminum plate lithography, stone lithography, screen print monotype, woodblock, and multi-block reductive.

After graduation, DeStefano hopes to relocate to San Francisco where she would work for an advertising agency or do graphic design.

~ Ashley Jonson

Canvas: “The Lost Poster Boys”

In 1967, artist Ben Shahn was commissioned by Syracuse University to design a mural in a theme of his choice. Today his glass and marble mosaic takes over the east wall of Huntington Beard Crouse (HBC), and is a very dramatic (and very permanent) piece of art.

Does “The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti” mean anything to you (smarty-pants don’t answer…)? Because that’s the masterpiece I’m talking about.

I’ve noticed it before, but I’ve never made it a point to stop and study this striking and stunning mosaic. So this past Tuesday I did just that. And looked at it. Really looked at it. For five solid minutes, just stared and studied (and probably looked lost, confused, and out of town). But then again, if public art is intended to last, why don’t we take more lasting views of it?

(photo credit: www.syr.edu)

I walked away wondering how this piece of art got here. So I decided to play detective.

First I’ll introduce the players: Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were two Italian-born Americans tried, convicted, and executed for murdering two Slater-Morrill Shoe Company employees in 1920. This was one hell of a seven-year trial for these boys—full of controversy. Discriminated against for their immigrant identities, and anarchist beliefs, Sacco and Vanzetti have turned into poster boys for the injustices of our justice system—because most people think they never committed the crime.

The mural’s three sections present three candid and unadorned representations of the trial and unfortunate fate of both men. On the left are a group of protestors, symbolizing the international coverage of this event around the world. In the center is a stark, simple image of the two men themselves—Vanzetti with his iconic mustache, and Sacco looking stanch and firm, their long shadows consuming the small, wimpy lawyer standing behind the two; the last panel shows the two men after execution, in their coffins.

So how did these boys become the million little (glass) pieces on the east side of HBC? Thank one American Social Realist painter and an unlikely French factory.

Shahn’s starting point for the mural was a tempera painting he did some thirty years earlier. It’s this painting that inspired the final scene in the mosaic—and gives the mosaic its title. After Shahn completed his design, the glass and marble chips were shipped to Chartres, France, where the mosaic was assembled in small sections, before arriving at SU. I find it amazing that this was one of Shahn’s last works, and the tempera painting that inspired it, one of the first that made him famous. He died in 1969—two years after the piece was installed.

If only Shahn could know it would be a year later in May 1970 that a student strike (protesting the jailing of Black Panther President Bobby Seale) would lead to the cancellation of the last six weeks of classes. Somehow it makes me think this mosaic would have meant that much more to Shahn—knowing our own student body voicing its own disagreement against prejudice and scandal.

This is art that’s connected—literally and historically—to our campus. And its integration and permanence is part of its incredibility. It isn’t in a gallery, hanging on a white wall, with spot lighting, and nine-to-five viewing hours. This one is open 24/7, all year, any season—transcending decades.

(photo credit: www.flickr.com)

Framing the images to the side of the mural are words pulled from a famous letter by Vanzetti. It ends: “That last moment belongs to us—that agony is our triumph”. To me that’s what this piece of art is all about; transcending the constraints of our faults to create messages of hope and inspiration.

So next time you’re walking through the quad, in a rush, tuned into your ipod and tuned out of what’s around you, stop and look—because you might just find yourself standing next to a masterpiece.

~Sarah Parker