Enhanced Episodes Now Up at iTunes!

Hi Everyone: We are now starting the rollout of the enhanced episodes of Series 1. We are starting with Episode 1 (Barhyte and Poe) and concluding in February 2009 with Episode 20 (Saul Bellow). Each enhanced episode contains a wealth of images that helps to tell the story of Yaddo and its artist guests. Please consider subscribing to our video feed at iTunes and receive each new enhanced episode as it becomes available. Click here to link to iTunes: Yaddocast at iTunes

Posted at 12:56PM Nov 25, 2008 by rich in General  |  Comments[0]

Episode 20: Saul Bellow (Audio Version)

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Episode 20 Description:
While Yaddo artists have amassed a remarkable sixty-three Pulitzer Prizes and fifty-eight National Book Awards, only Saul Bellow (1915-2005) has been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. The youngest son of Russian parents, Bellow was born in a slum in Lachine, Quebec. Through hard work, he eventually overcame numerous socio-economic, health, and citizenship challenges to become the definitive literary voice of mid-America: "Someone once called me a bureaucrat among writers," Bellow stated, "because my self-discipline seemed excessive." Viewed in this episode through the eyes of fellow Yaddo guest John Cheever, Bellow is seen as a man whose work ethic and success created a certain anxiety among writers, despite his warm and amiable nature. This portrait provides rare insights into the psychology of living and working in an artists' retreat. More importantly, such an appraisal of Bellow's standing as a writer allows us to assess how great reputation can be a temporary impediment, but also a long-term inspiration, to all creative talents.

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Posted at 11:14PM Oct 19, 2008 by rich in General  |  Comments[0]

Episode 19: Martin Puryear (Audio Version)

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Episode 19 Description:
Contemporary artist Martin Puryear was trained first as a craftsman of objects intended for use, such as guitars, canoes, and furniture, and only later as an artist of objects to be viewed and contemplated—etchings, paintings, and sculptures. This diverse training developed in Puryear an exceptional sensitivity to the media in which he works, such that he seems always to be struggling between two poles of creative inspiration: the artist's drive to bring a particular concept to life in a physical medium, and the craftsman's desire to engage the medium with an open mind and spirit to see what ideas it brings forth. This tension is embodied in the often massive yet gloriously approachable objects this world renowned sculptor brings to life. "My vehicle typically is to make work that is about the presentation of the work itself and what went into the making of the work as an object," Puryear said in a recent PBS documentary. "There's a story in the making of objects. There's a narrative in the fabrication of things, which to me is fascinating." To view Puryear's work is to see that story, and feel its fascination in a visceral manner.

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Posted at 12:03PM Oct 18, 2008 by rich in General  |  Comments[0]

Episode 18: Marianne Weems (Audio Version)

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Episode 18 Description:
Contemporary dramaturge and cross-media production artist Marianne Weems has amassed an unusual breadth and depth of professional experience. She has worked with the likes of David Byrne and Susan Sontag, and is the co-founder and artistic director of the New York performance company The Builders Association.The company creates multimedia theatre productions addressing hot-button topics such as globalization and surveillance, productions which have been hailed by the Wall Street journal as "theatrical alchemy in which ideas are turned into art by making them more beautiful." Weems's desire to create, and encourage others to create, such experimental and multi-disciplinary work has driven her to serve on the board of directors of Yaddo and Art Matters, and to pursue an academic career that recently landed her a position as head of the graduate directing program at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Drama.

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Posted at 10:00PM Oct 16, 2008 by rich in General  |  Comments[0]

Episode 17: Philip Guston (Audio Version)

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Episode 17 Description:
Visual artist Philip Guston (1913-1980)passed through many styles in his career, but all were united by his desire to create work of social relevance. When Guston was just eighteen, he painted a mural to call attention to the plight of several black youths who had been falsely accused and convicted. The mural was defaced by local police officers, which only strengthened Guston's resolve. The works of abstract expressionism for which he would be best know, while seemingly detached from social engagement, were in fact a refusal of the defunct artistic and social norms that had fueled to world wars,and a radical expression in favor of freedom and democracy. But by working too long in this style, Guston came to feel "schizophrenic," and "wanted to be whole." When he visited Yaddo in 1969, he busied himself creating works in a new cartoonish figurative style that drew on the earliest art training he had received, and opened the door to the greatest controversy of his career.

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Posted at 01:37PM Oct 15, 2008 by rich in General  |  Comments[0]

Episode 16: Elizabeth Ames (Audio Version)

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Episode 16 Description:
In 1923, Elizabeth Ames (1885-1977) was appointed the first Executive Director of Yaddo. She lost no time in creating network of advisors to help her extend invitations to the finest artists in all media, judge applicants, and select from early guests a board of directors. While she valued the input of all these parties, she was not afraid to state her opinion in no uncertain terms. For forty-six years, Ames was truly the matriarch of Yaddo, a designation descriptive both of the way she exercised power in governance, and of the unique brand of care and encouragement she provided to resident artists. Like the other great women of Yaddo before her—-Katrina Trask, Marjorie Peabody Waite, or Allena Pardee—-she poured all of her intelligence, hard work, and maternal instincts into bringing into the world a place of endless creative rebirth. Perhaps Yaddo was born of the Romantic visions of Katrina Trask, but it was reared to maturity under the patient and firm guidance of Elizabeth Ames.

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Posted at 04:52PM Oct 13, 2008 by rich in General  |  Comments[0]

Episode 15: Flannery O'Connor (Audio Version)

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Episode 15 Description:
In the summer of 1948, twenty-three year old Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) arrived at Yaddo. She had just earned her M.F.A from the University of Iowa, where she was considered quiet, provincial, and extremely talented. That summer at Yaddo she proved to be every bit as talented as expected, but perhaps less shy. She befriended writer Robert Lowell, who introduced her to the man who would become her agent. But Lowell also introduced her to trouble. In February 1949, Lowell charged that Executive Director Elizabeth Ames knowingly harbored Communists at Yaddo, and demanded she be removed from office. O'Connor joined Lowell, and their accusations unleashed a maelstrom in New York City literary circles. Somehow, O'Connor managed to disentangle herself from the ensuing fracas, seemingly unscathed. But the short stories she penned in its immediate aftermath, such as "Enoch and the Gorilla" and "A Good Man is Hard to Find," labored over themes of morally ambiguous or flawed action, and the thirst for celebrity—or at least, notoriety—that comes with self-determination.Perhaps, then, the ending to her chapter at Yaddo was not so clean as was imagined.

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Posted at 02:03PM Oct 11, 2008 by rich in General  |  Comments[0]

Episode 14: Si-Lan Chen (Audio Version)

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Episode 14 Description:
Among the thousands of remarkable artists who have passed through Yaddo, few have been as broad in their talents, or as fascinating in their personal history as dancer, choreographer, and actress Si-Lan Chen Leyda (1905-1996) Chen was born in Trinidad to a Chinese father and a French-African mother. When Sun Yat-sen brought about the Republic of China, he requested that Mr. Chen serve as Foreign Minister. This event kicked off a long peripatetic period in Si-Lan's life that would see her move to Hong-Kong, march from Canton to Wuhan when Chiang Kai-shek took power, and eventually flee to the Soviet Union. There her career as a dancer and choreographer blossomed. There too, she came to know a brilliant young film scholar by the name of Jay Leyda, whom she would marry. The couple eventually settled in Hollywood, where Si-Lan worked as the dance director for one feature film, and starred in three others—once opposite Shelly Winters and Liberace. Amazingly, all this preceded her 1954 residence at Yaddo, during which she produced the work closest to her heart.

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Posted at 12:06PM Oct 10, 2008 by rich in General  |  Comments[0]

Episode 13: Stewart Wallace (Audio Version)

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Episode 13 Description:
Contemporary composer and nine-time Yaddo guest Stewart Wallace's modus operandi is so collaborative and interdisciplinary that it is hard to speak about his recent opera The Bonesetter's Daughter as a Stewart Wallace opera, or even as an opera in any traditional sense. In a superlative study entitled Fate! Luck! Chance! Amy Tan, Stewart Wallace and the making of The Bonesetter's Daughter Opera, journalist and music critic Ken Smith traces the remarkable journey that led to this musical masterwork: from Wallace's collaboration with The Bonesetter's Daughter novelist turned librettist Amy Tan, to the assembly of an international team of talent, to the voyage through China that brought harmony to the music and visual direction of this deeply multicultural opera. In Smith's account we see, and in the score we hear, Wallace's uncommon genius. Rather than trying to impose his particular logic on the project, he exploited its illogic, fully embracing a post-modern aesthetic that would allow him to create a global mash-up of unprecedented scope, and undeniable bravery and power.

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Posted at 03:25PM Oct 09, 2008 by rich in General  |  Comments[0]

Episode 12: Mario Puzo (Audio Version)

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Episode 12 Description:
The story of Mario Puzo's (1920-1999) three residencies at Yaddo reveal as much about the man as his work. During his first two visits, in 1958 and 1960, Puzo labored over his 1965 novel The Fortunate Pilgrim, which until his death he considered his finest. It told the tale of a remarkable Italian-American matriarch named Lucia Santa, who held her family together through many New World travails. Puzo claimed the most admirable qualities of both Lucia Santa and his later creation Don Vito Corleone belonged to his own mother: "Whenever the Godfather opened his mouth," Puzo said, "in my mind I heard the voice of my mother." Ultimately, the culture that inspired his stories would also keep him from working successfully at Yaddo. Though he completed some work on The Godfather during his third stay, he cut the visit short."I was having a good time," he wrote to Executive Director Elizabeth Ames, "but for some reason I wasn't working too well. Probably because the older I get the more Italian-peasant I get and so I can't be happy unless I'm bossing a bunch of kids around and hearing a lot of noise." (works cited in podcast)

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Posted at 07:47PM Oct 07, 2008 by rich in General  |  Comments[0]

Episode 11: Spencer Trask (Audio Version)

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Episode 11 Description:
Spencer Trask (1844-1909) embodied the sort of dichotomy only 19th century America could produce—a calculating businessman and ardent support of the arts, a man with faith in technology and a head full of Romantic ideals. The motto found on a scrap in his wallet upon his death aptly summarizes the fundamental tension inherent in this industrialist and philanthropist: "For a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things which he possesseth." A native of Brooklyn and graduate of Princeton, he joined with his uncle to found his first investment firm at the tender age of twenty-two. The firm would become Spencer Trask and Company, which from its inception till this day has invested heavily in the new ideas and technologies that have shaped the modern era. Trask amassed such a vast fortune he was able to purchase the New York Times in 1896, and successfully reorganized it under the famous motto "All the News that is Fit to Print." But the motto found in his wallet proved the more prophetic, for Trask was a man deeply committed to humanitarian and philanthropic efforts. When, in 1899, his wife Katrina had a vision for how best to spend their fortune, Spencer didn't hesitate. He knew a good investment.

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Posted at 12:27PM Oct 06, 2008 by rich in General  |  Comments[0]

Next Week's Yaddocasts

Five all new episodes of Yaddocast debut Monday, October 6. Next week's episodes feature Spencer Trask, Mario Puzo, Stewart Wallace, Si-Lan Chen, and Flannery O'Connor. Remember, if you are a subscriber, you will always get new episodes downloaded directly to your computer as soon as they are available. For information on how to subscribe to Yaddocast, click here.

We would also like your help in promoting this new podcast series.. Please share this blog address (http://yaddocast.yaddo.org) with anyone you know who is interested in Yaddo specifically, or Arts and Letters more broadly.

Feel free to click on the comments link below each episode to provide feedback on that episode, or the link immediately beneath this posting to comment on the show more generally and leave messages for the creators of Yaddocast. They'll be sure to answer your queries.

Thank you for your support of Yaddocast, and be sure to tune in next week for five new episodes.

Posted at 09:20AM Oct 04, 2008 by rich in General  |  Comments[0]

Episode 10: Langston Hughes (Audio Version)

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Episode 10 Description:
Langston Hughes's (1902-1967) life story is that of the fracturing and re-cementing of community. His parents separated when he was a child, and he spent his youth being shuffled between family members and family friends. Somehow, he profited by such dislocation, nurturing an intellectual restlessness that put him in contact with many artists of his generation, and ultimately made him a unifying force of the Harlem Renaissance. During this period of cultural flourishing, it seemed the Black culture might become part of the mainstream, but this dream came crashing to Earth along with the economy. There would not be another concerted effort to integrate African Americans into the mainstream until the 1940's. Yaddo would be in the vanguard in these efforts, extending residencies to Hughes and composer Nathaniel Dett in 1942. But even at Yaddo the transition proved difficult. Three board members resigned in response to Yaddo's decision to integrate, and certain tensions lingered during Hughes's stay. Hughes, however, harbored no ill will. Indeed, he fought to nurture the community of Yaddo, as he believed it had nurtured his work. In 1949, Yaddo Executive Director Elizabeth Ames was accused of conspiring to harbor Communists, and Hughes immediately came to her aid. The plan of action he devised helped Ames retain her position, and helped the Yaddo community avoid further fragmentation in a divisive era.

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Posted at 05:31PM Sep 26, 2008 by rich in General  |  Comments[0]

Episode 9: Rudolph Charles Von Ripper (Audio Version)

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Episode 9 Description:
Nobleman, circus clown, soldier, and artist, Rudolph Charles Von Ripper (1905-1960) was one of the most remarkable creative spirits every to pass through Yaddo. He arrived in 1939 after being released from a concentration camp, but stayed only briefly. It seems he used his time at Yaddo like he used any brief pause in his life, as a moment to catch his breath before launching his next literal or figurative attack. He immediately enlisted in the United States Army, and fought bravely on the European front. He was shot in battle over twenty times, but soldiered on. While his personal heroics were the stuff of legend, his art may have been an even greater force in the war. When Time Magazine named Hitler Man of 1938, they chose Von Ripper's grim etching "Hymn of Hate" to grace the cover. With its gruesome Goya-esque imagery and bitter critique of the complacency of Europe's leaders, it was arguably a crucial first step in turning American opinion towards the war.

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Posted at 05:04PM Sep 25, 2008 by rich in General  |  Comments[0]

Episode 8: Janice Y.K. Lee (Audio Version)

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Episode 8 Description:
Before her 2002 residence at Yaddo, contemporary author Janice Lee had worked at Elle and Mirabella magazines as a books and features editor, and her writing had appeared in Elle, Mirabella, Harper's Bazaar, Glamour and Newsday, among others. But it was at Yaddo that she finally found the time, space, and artistic community that inspired her first novel. "My time at Yaddo was invaluable," Lee recalls, "because I was a young artist, without many publications to my name, and it was enormously helpful to be around other artists at different stages in their work. They provided a roadmap of possibilities and manifestations of what I could become.Being at Yaddo gave me the gift of time and place: time that had no constraints, save the limit of my stay, and a place where all I was obliged to do was work. I came away from my time at Yaddo with a reworked beginning to something that I was no longer afraid to call a novel." That novel, entitled The Piano Teacher, will be published in January, 2009 by Viking Press.

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Posted at 09:38PM Sep 24, 2008 by rich in General  |  Comments[3]