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content November 2011Two Poos Short of a Masterpiece - Dana Talbot-Heindl

Beauty Consumed - Rachel Peeters

Calendar of Events

Artist Interview: Dana Talbot-Heindl - Chris Talbot-Heindl

visions of war - Doug Somers

The Shriners are Coming - Robin Lee

Wall Street occupation brings global uprising to the United States - Michael Wilson and Aaron P. Osowski

something poetic or something - Doug Somers

Ceiling Lights -Tanya Haller

Donors & Index

Awoke to Pastel Rainbows - Tanya Haller

advertising:bitchin’ kitsch is offering crazy low rates of $5 for a fourth-page ad, $10 for a half-page ad, and $20 for a full page ad. book yours today by emailing chris at chris@talbot-heindl.com.

donation:we love our donors. If you would like to become a donor, email chris@talbot-heindl.com and make your pledge.

about b’k:bitchin’ kitsch is a zine for artists, poets, prose writers, or anyone else who has something to say. it exists for the purpose of open creativity. if you have something you want to share, please email it to chris@talbot-heindl.com.

Doug Somers - pg 7 Tanya Haller - pg 12

on the front cover:Two Poos Short of a MasterpieceDana Talbot-HeindlInk on toilet rollwww.talbot-heindl.com

on the inside front cover:Beauty ConsumedRachel PeetersSolar etchinghttp://www.wix.com/rpeet811/rpeeters

on the inside back cover:Awoke to Pastel RainbowsTanya HallerDigital arthttp://tanyahaller.moonfruit.com/

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Stevens Point (and neighbors) Calendar of Events

ArtThroughNovember3Descanse en Paz: The Homemade Grave Marker in the Southwest. Edna Carlsten Gallery. Reception November 2, 5 p.m. - 7 p.m.

ThroughNovember3Day of the Dead Installation. Edna Carlsten Gallery. Reception November 2, 5 p.m. - 7 p.m.

ThroughNovember5New Directions in Mosaics: Pauline Merry Pray. Q Artists’ Cooperative.

November1-December9Fauna: New Work from Alexander Landerman. The Scarabocchio Art Museum. Reception November 4, 6 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. featuring live music from Frog Crossing.

November4-6Central Wisconsin Film Festival. Stevens Point, Amherst, Marshfield. www.artsportagecounty.org

November8-January7A Gift of Art: Works by all the Q Artists for holiday gift giving. Q Artists’ Cooperative. Reception November 11, 5 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.

November10-December4Visions of War: Artists as Veterans, Veterans of Artists. Edna Carlsten Gallery. Reception November 11, 5 p.m. - 7 p.m.

Sunday,November13,11a.m.-2p.m.{in}organic world sculpture show at RailSide Farm, 109 County Rd E S, Stevens Point.

MusicNovember4Aftermath and Skillet. 6 p.m. at the

Quant Field House, UWSP.

November5Jenn Grinels (Folk/Acoustic) 8 p.m., Encore, UWSP.

November10The Dirty Daubers and The Farewell Drifters. 8 p.m., Encore, UWSP.

November11Tornado Rider. 8 p.m. at UWSP.

November12Central Wisconsin Bluegrass Festival. 10 a.m. - 10 p.m., Holiday Inn Hotel & Convention Center.

November14St. Louis Brass. 7:30 p.m. at Sentry Theater.

November17The Henhouse Prowlers. 8 p.m., Encore, UWSP.

November19Jeremiah Nelson with Clinton Miller. 8 p.m., Encore, UWSP.

TheaterNovember 11-13, 16-19Thoroughly Modern Millie. 7:30 p.m. Jenkins Theatre, UWSP.

OtherNovember4Jim Tavaré - Comedian. 8 p.m., The Laird Room, UWSP.

November11Kevin Hurley (Magician/Hypnotist). 10 p.m., Laird Room, UWSP.

November 12Al Snyder (Hypnotist). 7 p.m., Laird Room, UWSP.

November18

Tommy Gimler (Comedian). 8 p.m., Encore, UWSP.

November19Festival of Chocolate. 9 a.m. - 4 p.m., Jensen Community Center, Amherst.

If you would like to see your event in The Bitchin’ Kitsch next month, please email the details to chris@talbot-heindl.com.

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chris talbot-heindl.

Hi hubby. I know you don’t like being interviewed, so I’ll start off really easy. Tell me about growing up in a large and largely artistic family.

Chris:

Dana:

Chris:

Dana:

Chris:

Dana:

Artist Interview: Dana Talbot-HeindlBy guest columnist: Chris Talbot-Heindl

This month’s interview is with the artist/musician/builder Dana Talbot-Heindl.

www.talbot-heindl.com

There was a lot of cereal to be had and a lot of hard work on the farm. Goat’s milk, chickens...goats were there. And we didn’t have a friggin’ tv. So, I was forced to use my imagination.

It was good competition. But everyone was unique. I took little bits and pieces of ideas from each one of my siblings; and also a lot of criticism.

It’s too bad I didn’t get really good after all these years.

Tell me about how your artwork evolved. When and what did you first draw.

I imagine it was poop smears on whatever I could get my hands on at the time to get the yucky off my fingertips. I dropped some art not too long ago in the bathroom.

I started drawing comic book style characters and Sonic the Hedgehog when I was maybe eight or ten. From there, I did mostly comic style perspective drawings, sketches of cars, but I could never draw faces.

Bott WalkerInk on paper

Then I started drawing faces, and now that’s all I can draw. I actually started making faces out of clay working with my mom in the ceramic studio when I was about twenty maybe. She took me maybe once in a blue moon, but I was really good at it. But I really sucked at drawing faces, which is why I decided to start.

Tell me about your music and Mcfishenburger.

It’s kind of boring; mostly just cheap sound effects and synthetic sounds and instruments. The first time I took interest in music was at The Mission here in town. There was a local DJ, I don’t remember his name...he died recently. I bought his album while I was there that night at The Mission, and took

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chris talbot-heindl (con’t).

Chris:

Dana:

Chris:

Dana:

it home. First I noticed that he was using his computer. And I was like, “Hey, I have a computer.” I asked him what program he was using, it was Fast Tracker. I tried that program out for a couple of months and decided to look for more options and interface friendly alternatives. I found Mad Tracker.

Since then, I put out two albums, and have over fifty unfinished songs.

Mcfishenburger - the name came out when I was having a hard time registering for a game online. So, I came out with the first thing that came to my head, which happened to be Mcfishenburger. Then, I realized it was one of a kind, and I started using it as my screen name for everything online. I am the only thing that pops up when you type in “mcfishenburger.” And since I’m fish, my wife (you) are now burger.

Do you plan out any of your artwork or music, or does it just happen organically?

Bathroom BoredomInk on toilet rolls

Everything that I do starts out with a purpose and some kind of order, but not once has it turned out how I imagined. Sometimes it is way better than what I had imagined, but most of the time it’s way worse. But I usually get the basic concept down.

You seem to reject common place or “normal” means and aesthetics, as well as medium. Is that a concious choice?

It’s absolutely a choice. I’ll tell you why. If you tell somebody they have paints and a paintbrush, and they can make beautiful art with these, you are not telling them the billions of other options they have.

Like I said, I dropped art in the bathroom not too long ago.

Art is everything. Art is every expression from everyone and everything. More or less, we can capture art how we want to. I’m capturing art in odd ways in the hopes that others will do the same and shed off tradition. Tradition’s good and all, and is good for mastering any one thing, but you’ll start to lose focus on the grand scale.

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doug somers, robin lee.

visions of warDoug SomersScreenprint

The Shriners are ComingBy: Robin Lee

THE SHRINERS ARE COMING!RUN FOR YOU LIVES!MOM’S GRAB YOUR CHILDREN!HUSBANDS GRAB YOUR WIVES!

Hear them hum in the horizon,Soon they will be nearHere they are in their little cars!What the town has always feared.

Oh my God they’re gaining on us…RUN! RUN! RUN!MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN!THEY’LL RUN OVER EVERYONE!

See the evil in their eyebrows.See the malice in their eyes.Their thrill’s to kill, watch our blood spill,to see us slowly die.

They’re gaining on us! They’re gaining on us!THEY’RE RIGHT ON OUR HEALS!They have only gas pedalsthey know not how to yield.

OH MY GOD THEY GOT AUNT ALMA!Let her go, shriners, PLEASE!They are too relentlessshe’ll never be released.

Kids you keep on running!Please don’t turn around!Little wheels and painful squealsare the only sounds to be found.

The shriners are here! The shriners are here!Oh my dear god no.There’s no escape now.There’s no where to go.

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michael wilson, doug somers.

something poetic or somethingDoug SomersScreenprint

Wall Street occupation brings global uprising to the United StatesBy: Michael WilsonCo-written with Aaron P Osowski

In hundreds of cities across the country, doctors, veterans, nurses, professionals, middle class, service industry and agricultural workers, indigenous and immigrant organizations, senior citizens, teachers,

trade unionists, environmentalists and antiwar activists, and students of all ages add support for the Occupy movement. Steadily growing since its birth on Wall Street on September 17, despite the absence of a clear agenda, the “Occupy” movement demonstrates how strictly horizontal and decentralized democratic structures can create a new society out of a broken one.

Decades’ brewed public discontent–be it with representative government and its evident collusion

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michael wilson (con’t).

with corporate interests, compounded by declining standards of living for the American middle class, “free trade agreements” and job outsourcing, environmental catastrophes such as the nuclear power plant explosions in Japan or the deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, widespread unemployment, home foreclosures, homelessness, CEO bonuses and rising profits for the institutions that led us to financial meltdown, or whatever other reason–has finally manifested itself into an massive and organized civil disobedience movement. The call for global social change has fully reached the United States.

Following the nonviolent spontaneous actions that overthrew dictators in Egypt and Tunisia, which were first brought to the United States by the Madison protests last February and March, the “global revolution” has pried its way into the mainstream of our political discourse.

With growing popularity and potential,the movement attracts society’s opinion leaders who are sympathetic to the cause, such as sociologist Michael Eric Dyson, hip-hop artist Immortal Technique, documentarian Michael Moore, actress Susan Sarandon, antiwar and women’s rights activist Medea Benjamin, and many others.

The growing public thirst for attention to the Occupy movement results in media attempts to grapple the movement, frenzying with questions like, “What are they protesting?” and “What are their objectives?” Mainstream media outlets are quick to dismiss the movement as either too poorly organized or simply unrealistic. Bloomberg Magazine, one of the major market-oriented journals in the U.S., claims in its headlines that the movement “needs goals” or will fizzle.

However, a lack of tangible political goals is not a deficiency for the movement, it is its strength. If the political parties, which are among the clearest of the protestors’ targets, are given a policy issue on which to take sides, the debate becomes institutionalized, facing dilution, which protestors fear. Therefore, the best thing the movement can do for itself is to keep its agenda hidden from the halls of the two-party government.

The lack of a clear agenda also allows the movement to attract folks from all walks of life, each with their own level of discontent, their own targets, their

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michael wilson (con’t).

Like the Wall Street occupation, Occupy D.C. touts the slogan of “We Are the 99%.” On its website, it clarifies what exactly the “99%” is, saying: “If you are upset with the economy, corporate person-hood, education, healthcare, the multiple wars we have, corruption–mainly money in politics, and anything associated with this in one way or another that you fall under the 99% and this movement is for you.”

Citing criticisms that their movement, like the entire Occupy Together movement, does not have clear set goals laid out, Occupy D.C. says that they wish to “hear from the people what they want … before we can even think about releasing official demands.”

Another group that has set up an occupation in D.C. is one called October 2011, whose movement “Stop the Machine: Create a New World” seeks to occupy Freedom Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue indefinitely.

The movement was started on Oct. 6 to mark the 10th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan as well as the start of the austerity-ridden 2012 federal budget. Stop the Machine’s philosophy is that of nonviolent resistance in the same vein as the Arab Spring and the winter protests in Madison.

Like the Occupy D.C. movement, Stop the Machine does not have clear set goals at the moment. However, there are 15 core issues that they are concerned about

own concerns. This is demonstrated by the fact that each week, the movement gains more traction from more and more among “the 99 percent.” Articles like Bloomberg’s only demonstrate how the financial sector and the political system are reacting to the movement as it gains more and more ground: with fear.

Although the movement’s critics point to its lack of a coherent agenda and central structure, the ways in which this organized sigh of collective despair operates have the crucial potential to lay the blueprint for a functioning direct democracy. General Assemblies (GAs) in different cities use a variation of the following political organization: a highly horizontal, rather than top-down, and decentralized system based on the consensus and direct participation of all GA members.

Main Street challenges Wall Street Take as an example the Occupy Wall Street movement, which held its largest General Assembly to date on Saturday, October 8. Any person can join the GA, and any GA member can start committees or join those already standing. The GA, which meets several times a week, is updated about what the committee does, and takes consensus-based votes on major decisions, creating a two-way feedback system.

A collective “human microphone” system of phrase repetition is used to ensure that all GA attendants, now surpassing the thousands in places like Wall Street, can hear what a speaker announces across entire parks and plazas. Anyone can get a speaking turn. There are working groups in which people volunteer and delegate important tasks, such as park cleanup. Legal assistance and free food tents, assisted by donations–particularly in pizza–coming in from all across the globe, are easily spotted. Most importantly, folks are encouraged to participate in sustaining the movement in whatever way they are able, from marching to key locations, leading yoga classes, joining drum circles to using their creativity and talent and expertise to promote the cause through art and media, or simply sitting around talking to others, promoting healthy debate and a truly democratic ethos.

Catching fire in the capitalIn Washington, D.C., and increasingly, in cities all around the country, the Occupy Together movement has caught fire. In D.C.’s McPherson Square, the Occupy D.C. movement has stationed itself 24/7/365.

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michael wilson (con’t).

and which they are forming committees around to deliberate courses of action. Some of these issues include human rights, corporate influence in politics, worker rights and militarism.

The interrelatedness of all these issues was on display when the Stop the Machine protests, in conjunction with Occupy D.C. and United for Peace and Justice, joined a rally that was held directly across the street from Freedom Plaza in opposition to the energy company Transcanada’s proposed $13 billion Keystone Pipeline project. The movements joined together after the federal hearings and marched down the streets of D.C. on Saturday afternoon.

The march ended at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial, where Michael McPhearson, national coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, spoke in front of the protestors. McPhearson drew parallels between King’s age and the one we currently find ourselves in, bringing up his 1967 speech at Riverside Church in New York entitled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”

“One thing he called us in that speech was the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. That’s because we were at war,” McPhearson said. “Today we are at war, but we are certainly dropping more bombs on people around the world than any other nation. We have more troops deployed around the world than any other nation. We continue to be the greatest purveyor of war around the world.”

Members of Afghans for Peace also spoke, and one member, Soraya Pakzad, spoke to the lack of an Afghan national voice and the main problems facing the country today.

“I ask you to keep in mind that it is the right of the Afghan people to self-determination, and for that to happen, they need to be empowered,” Pakzad said. “And to empower the people, we need to refocus on our priorities. They’re living in poverty, they need food, shelter, healthcare, education.”

Bill Holmes from Vietnam Veterans Against the War spoke to the movement’s thoughts about the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

“We are against THE war. Because every one of these theaters, every one of these theaters of combat is the

war. … We must mourn our dead, but fight like hell for the living,” Holmes said.

Occupy Together has 865 participating cities and growing, and both the media and Washington are starting to take notice of the movement’s growth and strength. The repercussions of what occurred in Egypt last February were widely felt. In the United States, folks were touched by the idea that they too could finally unleash their desperation, their economic and social frustrations. Now, what occurs in the United States–the most powerful and influential country in the world–can imply systemic change for the entire planet.

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tanya haller, donors, index.

advertisersBitchin’ Kitsch 14

mcfishenburger 10

Second Space 9

www.talbot-heindl.com 11

artistsTanya Haller 12, 13

Robin Lee 7

Aaron P. Osowski 8-11

Rachel Peeters 2

Doug Somers 7, 9

Chris Talbot-Heindl 5-6

Dana Talbot-Heindl cover

Michael Wilson 8-11

we love our donors!We love our donors, and to prove it, we’re going to let you know who they are. Without their generosity, the Bitchin’ Kitsch would probably not make it through the year. If you would like to become a donor and see your name here, email chris@talbot-heindl.com and make your pledge.

acquaintences of the bitchin’ kitsch ($1-10)Colin Bares, Casey Bernardo, Eric Krszjzaniek, Dana Lawson, Jason Loeffler, Justin Olszewski

friends of the bitchin’ kitsch ($11-50)Charles Kelly

lovers of the bitchin’ kitsch ($51-100)Scott Cook, Jan Haskell

partners of the bitchin’ kitsch ($101 & up)The Talbot-Heindl’s, Felix Gardner

Ceiling LightsTanya HallerPhotographhttp://tanyahaller.moonfruit.com/

a talbot-heindl project1735 a. division st, stevens point, wi 54481www.talbot-heindl.com