Durham, NC — Rock Fish Stew is premiering “Leaving Traces,” a 75-minute documentary by RFS partner Ivan Weiss, at the Full Frame Theater at the American Tobacco Campus. Showtime is 6pm on July 12. The film follows a group of artists who converged on the Durham Bulls Athletic Park during the 2013 season for Rock Fish Stew’s […]
Tom Stoppard on Stew
From Stoppard’s play, Arcadia (1993, Faber and Faber), an opening scene set in Derbyshire, England in April, 1809: THOMASINA (a pupil, age thirteen): When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backward, the jam will […]
Behind the Scenes of a Documentary Film based on Jazz Loft Project
Here are a few production stills from the documentary film based on The Jazz Loft Project (JLP) that is currently in post-production. The film is directed by WNYC’s Sara Fishko, who was producer and host of the JLP public radio series for WNYC, and produced by Cal Skaggs and Jonathan Johnson at Lumiere Productions. WNYC’s […]
Museum Hours
At Rock Fish Stew we’re inspired by the work of filmmaker Jem Cohen. Lately we’ve been studying his 2013 work, Museum Hours, which tells a story set in contemporary Vienna, mostly in that city’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, particularly in the room devoted to the 16th century paintings of Pieter Bruegel. The film’s main characters are a […]
Field Notes from Kate Joyce: Tony Gwynn and the Art of Seeing
Many in the baseball world were moved by Monday’s news of Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn passing away at age fifty-four. For the past two days commentators and eulogists have compared him to an artist. How many in the art world would compare themselves to a baseball player, or seek influence from one? Last summer […]
Unhinged
This box of sixty-two cassettes arrived in the Rock Fish Stew offices this week. They contain recordings of Bonnaroo and Big Ears founder Ashley Capps’ legendary Knoxville public radio show, “Unhinged,” taped from WUOT‘s airwaves by a dedicated (and generous) listener, Matthew Range, from 1989 to 1992. A quick sample of Matthew’s handwritten tape labels […]
Kate Joyce Opens Solo Show in NYC
For all Rock Fish Stew and Bull City Summer fans who happen to be in New York this Thursday, June 12, RFS collaborator and BCS photographer Kate Joyce has a solo show opening at the Rick Wester Fine Art (526 W. 26th Street, Suite 417, Chelsea). Showtime is 6-8pm, during which Kate will give a […]
Wordless & Jonny Greenwood
Nine weeks after imbedding in Big Ears, we’re beginning to make some sense of the documentary material we brought home. Here’s one glimpse. In our 50-minute interview with Jonny Greenwood, he said: I think most people’s record collections, or MP3 collections, are more varied than they ever were. But, then, maybe it’s always been like that, […]
Bull City Summer on Display at ATC
The American Tobacco Campus has a special exhibit of Bull City Summer material, including works by Alex Harris, Frank Hunter, Kate Joyce, Adam Sobsey, Leah Sobsey, Alec Soth, Jeff Whetstone, Hank Willis Thomas, Hiroshi Watanabe, and Ivan Weiss. This is the only venue in Durham to see this material, and it will last through August. The […]
The Story of “John Coltrane: A Biography”
In 1975, Dr. Cuthbert Ormond Simpkins published a biography of John Coltrane. The story of Simpkins and his book is worthy of the subject he so passionately wrote about. RFS’ own Sam Stephenson delves into this subject in “An Absolute Truth: On Writing a Life of Coltrane” in The Paris Review Daily.