GLAD TIDINGS WE BRING!

Montpelier, VT – Tis the holidaze, yo. And you know what that means, don't you? Time for X-Mess Fest at the jolly old Langdon Street Café right here in Montpelier! The Glad-iator is on board with plenty of new offerings just in time for the season. Need a stocking stuffer at the last minute? Insert three dollars in quarters slowly and carefully and pull the knob with your selection. Voila! Its Glad Tidings. Stuff that in your stocking for some cheer, why don'tcha.

The big itty-bitty!

THE BIGGEST LITTLE ART SHOW EVER!
COMING IN FEBRUARY 2008 AT
THE LANGDON STREET CAFÉ.
THE REVOLUTION WILL
NOT BE SUPER-SIZED!
THE GLAD-IATOR WILL
CONQUER ALL BOREDOMS!
SUBMIT TO THE GLAD!
SUBMIT TO THE BIG ITTY-BITTY!
ARTISTS WANTED.
ART NO BIGGER THAN A BREADBOX!

To get more info on submissions to the Glad-iator, contact the Glad-iator homegirl Rachael Rice 223-4949 or find her on the spiderweb at myspace.com/rachael_rice. Or myspace.com/newdirections

To submit to the Big Itty-Bitty contact Scott at the Langdon Street Café. scott@langdonstreetcafe.com.


This space for rent.
Put an ad in the Glad-zette
and wonder why.
Just $20

A GLAD-ZETTE EXCLUSIVE!
AN INTERVIEW WITH
SEVEN DAYS ART CRITIC MARC AWODEY
Glad-zette reporter Ben t. Matchstick virtually sat down with Seven Days Art Critic, poet, and painter Marc Awodey to answer ten questions. Marc was the founder of Minimal Press which distributed poetry via vending machines throughout the state in the 1990's. His "95 Thesis on Art and Machines" will be featured in the Glad-iator very soon. We are Glad to know you, Marc. This interview has been left unedited. – ed.

1. What inspired you to start vending poetry from old cigarette vending machines?

a. the machines were a system of distribution of the little folding books (eight pages from a single sheet of paper). and an important point here is POETRY MAINTAINS ITS VERACITY REGARDLESS OF SCALE. the poets of the minimal press - basically anyone what made a little book became a poet of the minimal press - had been distributing works guerrilla style already, and they had been many places - even around the world. everyone who made a little book distributed her/his own, and was given a stack of additional titles by others to distribute. The now defunct Rhombus gallery in burlington was our headquarters. we felt wouldn't it be nice to get .25 or fifty cents a piece for the books - as a token of respect for poetry? i started with laundry soap box vending machines, from a closing laundrymat. i got 2 of them for free. i put them in a couple of bars. vermont had just banned the use of cig. machines, so i contacted venders and got more free machines. i gave vending companies letters saying they were making in-kind contributions to the rhombus - a nonprofit- worth $300, so they wrote them off on their taxes. i eventually had ten cigarette machines installed around the northeast. i also did a couple of snack machines and gum ball haiku machines. we were proving how easy it is to do something from nothing and that poetry, and by extension art in general, doesn't require elite gatekeepers.

2. After the initial launch of the minimal press vending machine project, what types of responses did you have, from poets and artists as well as from the recipients?

a. selling poetry from a machine is like putting your cat's medicine in a ball of liverwurst, and there was always a sense of wonder from the recipients. again the cat metaphor - people love bright shinny objects - and the machines were spectacles in themselves. everyone loved the machines. a problem was i'd donate them to venues and groups of poets, and they were glad to have them- but after six months or year a they'd get tired of them and want me to pick them up. but a donation is a donation - i'd suggest the give them to someone else, or sell them, or put them in a dumpster someplace. once a piece of art is out of my hands it needs to survive, or not, by it's own wits. so time has not been good to the machines. one is safely ensconced in a major art collection, i know one is in the basement of the fletcher free library (and they'd like to get rid of it). the new york city machine was vandalized to death and hauled away. the worcester, MA machine was in service for many years and locally restocked - that was probably the most successful one. the others ended their days beyond my knowledge of what happened to them.

3. In the distribution of art from vending machines, there comes relationship between the artist, the curator, the machine, and the recipient. The two middle parties, the curator and the machine seem superfluous. Can you talk about the role of the machine and why anyone would want to allow a machine to distribute their work?

a. the curator is always superfluous to the actual act of creation. machines are our partners in daily life, so to vend art by machines draws a connection by association- saying art is vital. machines have authority- whatever a machine sells MUST be essential - cigarettes, art, candy, newspapers - all are equal when sold from a machine. in terms of poetry, as i noted, scale isn't an issue. for pure visual art, created on a small scale - i guess if the visual artist's concerns include small scale works a vending machine is a perfect venue. it might be an interesting challenge to make visual art specifically so small - intellectual curiosity could be the motivation. the message in a bottle syndrome might also apply - the machine can be your ocean.

4. Have you ever heard of Art-o-Mat? What do you think about that?

a. on the very day my concord, NH machine was to be launched i heard a story on "morning edition" about clark whitington, mr. art-o-mat, and his machines. i was wrapping books around blocks of wood and so it sounded just like mine! we were responding to the same cultural stimuli - or like two astronomers, discovering
(Awodey interview, cont.)
the same planet independently. i contacted him and we were in touch for awhile. he's a very nice fellow, but i soon disagreed with his $5 a block commercialism, (our little books were 50 cents) his ideas about franchising, and intense marketing. he made a career of his machines - a rather successful career. he's in the whitney, and the andy warhol museum now. people should get onto google and look up the obscure vermonter "samuel morey." i must admit to similar feelings... once robert fulton sailed his steamboat down the hudson. into new york city and the history books,
morey is said to have sunk his in the vermont lake that now bears his name. clark and i did discover the same planet, but our telescopes were on very different hills.

5. What was your role in distributing the art? Was there a review process, or did anyone get a slot?

a. anyone who took the initiative to make their own little books, and agreed to distribute the works of others was gladly incorporated into the minimal press, and added to a machine if one was being built or restocked at the time.

6. What about thesis 41? Why are slot machines the highest order of art?

a. yes indeed - the element of chance is in every breath we take. a slot machine does nothing till we pay it to do something, and then we don't have any control over what it will do. control is an illusion. artists should never try to impose their will onto the piece of art - let it develop on it's own path, be in dialog with the piece. take your chances, take the risk of creation.

7. And 61? Who's Henry?

a) herny is a figure from the poetry of John Berryman - berryman's great work is called the dream songs. the first verse of dream song 13 is:

"God bless Henry. He lived like a rat,
with a thatch of hair on his head
in the beginning.
Henry was not a coward. Much.
He never deserted anything; instead
he stuck, when things like pity were thinning."

henry is a portrait of the poet - really, of all artists, who work in obscurity - and we grow older, as we work.

8. Can we reprint your manifesto as part of Glad-Tidings? Would you add anything to the manifesto?

a. YES PLEASE DO. you might mention that martin luther's 95 theses was a key document in the protestant reformation, and it was nailed to the door of wurttemburg cathedral on october 31 1517. mine was nailed onto a door of the electronic cathedral - the internet - at about.com, on 10/31/1999.

9. You are an art critic for Seven Days, and you are very kind to artists. Is biting your tongue ever part of the job?

a. i neither bite my tongue nor lick my chops when seeing art i don't agree with. i ignore it.

9.2. Don't you ever scoff at expensive, maximalist art?

a) yes - but unfortunately scoffing in print seems rather mean spirited. i generally scoff by proxy, giving it very little ink. however, i'm a low income artist and we all must compromise sometimes to pay the rent or mortgage; be it putting in hours pouring coffee at dunkin donuts, or glossing over something unsavory at burlington city arts firehouse gallery...(editors note: the interviewer was an organizer of events for the Firehouse Gallery's Burlesque Ball fundraiser, ha!) i try to redeem myself by going in the other direction at times - writing about nonacademic artists, and spaces that are not necessarily the most powerful. i find some solace in the words of vlad lenin "the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." honest art survives if honest artists can survive. if the MacArthur foundation gave me a grant i'd gleefully spend it... and i'd give you $1000 of it for the upkeep or your machine! but of course, neither will actually happen. so we must do what we must do. (editor's note: We would Gladly accept, but not gleefully. Some dignity puleeze.)

10. Please rewrite any of the above questions, or elaborate on any subject.

a) i've been writing senryu at times- and one of them is "there were once giants, but they were overwhelmed by trivial concerns." i'd like to encourage you and this new generation of art machinists to surpass and outlive the older generations of direct action artists - for at least long enough to be surpassed your selves. such is what moves the cultural continuum ever onward toward wherever faith and tenacity might take it.

thank you for your good works. (ed. note: No, thank you!)

ps. you might mention my paintings will be appearing in montpelier at the vermont supreme court building in january, and my books, including 95 theses, are available on amazon.com - one shouldn't "cut off your nose to spite your face" as my mother says.

THANK YOU MARC! WE'RE HAPPY THAT YOU'RE GLAD! AN INPIRING TALK WOULDN'T YOU SAY?

CHECK OUT A VERSION OF MARC AWODEY'S 95 THESIS IN THIS ROUND OF THE GLAD-IATOR!
THE GLAD-IATOR IS CURRENTLY THE ONLY CHEAP ART AND LITERATURE VENDING MACHINE IN OPERATION THROUGH ALL OF VERMONT! MARC HAS LIT THE WAY- STILL, THE GLAD-IATOR CHARGES INTO THE ABYSS. YARR!

WRITE FOR THE GLAD-ZETTE!
Do you have an idea for the next issue of the Glad-zette? Contact Ben at cardboardteck@gmail.com to contribute writings, or interviews, or musings or more. The Glad-zette is a publication that will soon be made available in other locations around town. That's not a promise, it's a hopeless dream. Hooray.

BE OUR FRIEND
Speak directly to the Glad-iator. Be a "friend" of the coolest inanimate object around. Send "electronic mail" to the most eloquent former cigarette vending machine in Montpelier. Get "on-line" and "chat" without fear of getting "spam-mated". Got an idea? Want to bounce it round? Need advice or box templates? Want get into the ring with the Glad-iator? Did Russell Crowe ever have knobs like these? Don't answer that! Visit Myspace.com/gladiatorart or email gladiatorart@yahoo.com

CARDBOARD TECK INSTANTUTE:
News scraps from the ReStore
Need supplies or inspiration? Visit the ReStore(186 River St.). Interested in hosting a workshop or sharing materials and tools? Contact Ben at cardboardteck@gmail.com, or the ReStore at 229-1930. ReStore hours: M-F 10-5 Sat. 10-3