Jason Crabb wins gospel music artist of the year

ATLANTA (AP) — Christian singer Jason Crabb might not have won all of the awards he was nominated under, but he certainly came away with the two most prominent categories for a male artist.
Crabb went home with artist and male vocalist of the year awards Thursday night. The 43rd Dove Awards show for Christian and gospel music will air on April 24 for GMC, formerly the Gospel Music Channel. The awards show was held at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta for the second straight year.
"It just blows my mind," said Crabb, who entered the awards with eight nominations. "It hasn't sunk in just yet. I'm proud to be in the family of God, and proud to be his kid. I can't believe it. I want to challenge other people and other kids this: Go after your dreams, pursue them. God is behind you."
Crabb said after winning the awards, the pressure is on to produce more quality songs.
"I have to get my 'A' game on now," he said with laughter. "It makes me want to strive to do better, to live as good as I can and be an example. I'm just going to do the best that I possibly can."
Natalie Grant dethroned Francesca Battistelli, taking home female vocalist of the year. Grant previously won the award four straight years before Battistelli had done so for two years.
After winning her first Grammy in February, Laura Story continued her stellar year with five awards. The singer's Grammy-winning song, "Blessings," won her song of the year at the Doves.
A pregnant Story said overcoming the tough times motivated her to write many of her songs including, "Blessings."
"I would rather have written a story about winning the lottery, than write about that," Story said. There are hard times in our lives, but that's when we see God show up."
R&B soul singer Angie Stone along with gospel singers Yolanda Adams, Crystal Lewis and Karen Peck opened up the show with a choir dressed of red, singing a spirited rendition of Dottie Rambo's song "I Go To the Rock." The foursome's performance was a tribute to Whitney Houston, who died Feb. 11. Houston also sang the song in the 1996 movie, "The Preacher's Wife."
Stone, who learned about the tribute a day ago, said it was an emotional experience.
"It was hard because I learned about doing it yesterday," the singer said. "But overall, because it was for Whitney, I gave all that I could for Whitney. I'm still trying to process she is gone."
After the singers' touching performance, some humor shortly followed when co-hosts actor David Mann of Tyler Perry's sitcom "Meet the Browns" and Christian comedian Chonda Pierce took the stage. Pierce asked if Mann could introduce her at some point, and the actor sarcastically said, "I'll see what I can do," while looking away as audience members broke into laughter.
Other performers included music artists ranging from Yolanda Adams, Natalie Grant, Ruben Studdard, Mandisa to rapper Lecrae
Jamie Grace won new artist of the year. The 20-year-singer, who has battled with Tourette's syndrome for nearly half of her life, shed tears while accepting her award and thanked her family along with TobyMac, who signed Grace to his label, Gotee Records, after he discovered her through YouTube.
"My prom was here four years ago at the Fox Theatre, and my mom brought me here," said Grace, a Grammy nominee. "This is a dream come true."
Kirk Franklin ended a five-year drought, claiming contemporary gospel album of the year for his album, "Hello Fear." Franklin has had strong year so far as well, Franklin, recently collecting two Grammys and two NAACP Image Awards, hasn't won a Dove Award since 2007.
Rapper Lecrae won three awards including rap/Hip Hop recorded album and song of the year. NEEDTOBREATHE won group of the year award for the second consecutive time.
Presenters included Montell Jordan, actress-singer Tamela Mann and wrestler A.J. Styles.

Italy: Funds-short museum burns art in protest

ROME (AP) — For a second day in a row, the director of a contemporary art museum in a small Italian town near Naples has burned a painting to protest a shortage of funds.
Antonio Manfredi set aflame a painting by Neapolitan artist Rosaria Matarese on Wednesday night outside the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, which is housed in the basement of a public school in the hinterland of the southern city.
A day earlier he burned a painting by a French artist. Both artists had given their consent.
Manfredi had threatened to burn paintings if financial help wasn't promised for the private museum.
Italy's museums have been strapped for funds for decades, but art world officials say the economic crisis has aggravated the plight. Officials of the center-left Democratic Party appealed to the government Wednesday for funds for the museum.
"We survived for seven years without public funds, with few private sponsors," Manfredi told AP. "But we would like to be considered a public service."
The artist, who is also a art teacher, said it was "painful to see my work burning, but it is an important action to save this museum, which is very important for this area." Matarese said the work was worth about €6,000-7,000 ($7,800-$9,100).
"We did this action to attract attention of artists and institutions," Manfredi said, adding that the museum "is running the risk of dying."

Fans recall American artist Jackson Pollock at 100

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. (AP) — Out behind a small farmhouse on a Long Island country road sits an old gray barn where a tormented artist dripped paint off brushes, sticks — even turkey basters — onto canvasses spread out on a wooden floor. Besides making quite a mess of things, leaving splash marks everywhere, Jackson Pollock also created some of the 20th century's greatest masterpieces.

Pollock, who would have turned 100 this year, is being remembered at a New York City fundraiser later this month honoring a charity that aids struggling artists, along with the Academy Award-nominated actor and filmmaker Ed Harris who spent nearly a decade making the 2000 film "Pollock."

There also are exhibitions in Washington, D.C., and at the home Pollock shared with his wife, artist Lee Krasner, in the Springs community of East Hampton — now a museum and study center. And shoe manufacturer Crocs is releasing a Pollock-inspired shoe this June, fashioned after the paint-splashed floor that visitors can still see in the artist's barn.

"I think Pollock's art is incredible," Harris told The Associated Press in a recent telephone interview. "I think it was revolutionary at the time and I think it kind of holds up that way and it is really exquisite."

The fundraiser honoring Harris, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, which has given $56.3 million in grants to artists in 72 countries since 1985, is intended to help finance and expand the work of a separate Stony Brook University-based organization that runs the Pollock-Krasner home.

"What we try to give people here is insights into who these people were, what it was that stimulated them creatively and where that took them in terms of their art," said Helen Harrison, director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center.

Harris said that before he started filming in 1999 — the exteriors of the Pollock-Krasner home and scenes from a nearby general store were filmed on location in Springs; the interiors re-created on a Brooklyn sound stage — he spent a couple of nights sleeping in Pollock's bedroom.

"I was hoping for a visitation which didn't quite happen," joked Harris, who was nominated for a best actor Oscar for his performance in the film, which also was his directorial debut.

"I can't even express how invaluable it was to me," he said of the home. "I don't think the film would have really have had the richness and authenticity it did if we weren't filming there. Just on an emotional level, or a metaphysical level of some kind, you know you're filming a story about this man and this is where he lived."

Pollock, a lifelong alcoholic who died behind the wheel in a drunken-driving crash at the age of 44, was a controversial artist reviled by some critics and lionized by others. His best-known paintings were created by dripping paint, seemingly haphazardly, across canvasses large and small. Some feature popping bright colors, others are stark black-and-whites.

"I like to describe his work as 'energy made visible,'" said Pepe Karmel, a Pollock expert and assistant professor in the art history department at New York University. "The lines curving through space, changing direction, the colors; it is an amazing image of the world that could represent many things. It's totally opened ended. What they all have in common is the fantastic energy that characterizes modern society."

Pollock was already an artist of some note working in Manhattan's Greenwich Village in the early 1940s, but the move to Long Island in late 1945 was the key to unlocking his genius, many experts say. They also agree Krasner's motive in separating Pollock from his drinking buddies in Manhattan succeeded in focusing his attention on his artwork, albeit temporarily. Marcia Gay Harden won a best supporting actress Oscar for her portrayal of Krasner, who was an artist in her own right, living in the home until her death in 1984 at age 75.

"He looks out and he sees Mother Nature, which is his great stimulation," Harrison said. "And then he thinks back to his childhood in Arizona and California and the wide open spaces. These things all came flooding back to him, and he has an epiphany."

Adds Karmel: "In a very general way, the landscape did inspire him. The immensity of the ocean, being on the beach; that is certainly feeling akin to being out west."

Today, Pollock artworks sell for tens of millions — one painting in 2006 reportedly sold to an unidentified collector for $140 million — but when the couple lived in East Hampton in the late '40s and '50s, they struggled to pay their bills. Harrison says there was one bounced check found amid Pollock's papers for $4, and it was several years before the home was equipped with electricity and plumbing.

A key turning point came in 1949, when Life magazine did a profile of Pollock, asking the question, "Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?"

The publicity "put him on the map in a huge way," Harrison said, noting he sold $4,000 in paintings soon after the article appeared. "He called a plumber, shingled the house, paid off the mortgage. They were normal people except for the fact they were artistic geniuses. Other than that they lived a normal life."

Pollock, who descended into a deep alcoholic haze and may have suffered from depression or other mental illness — he was never properly diagnosed, says Harrison — was having an affair with artist Ruth Klingman at the time of his death in August 1956. While Krasner was vacationing in Europe, Pollock smashed his Oldsmobile convertible in a drunken stupor about a mile from his home in Springs. Klingman survived the crash (she died in 2010), but a friend, Edith Metzger, was killed.

"I don't mind the fact that he was a mean son of a bitch at times, and had a lot of personal problems that he fought through," Harris said. "The one thing that I feel harms his legacy is that he basically was responsible for the death of Edith Metzger."

Besides the April 25 fundraiser in Manhattan, a centennial tribute of Pollock's art continues at the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery in Washington, D.C. until May 15. An exhibit, "The Persistence of Pollock," will be on display at the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center from May 3-July 28, and a lecture on Pollock and Krasner will be held at the John Drew Theater at Guild Hall in East Hampton on July 22.

Crocs will introduce a limited edition "Jackson Pollock Crocs Classic" shoe, featuring a replica of a photo taken from the floor of Pollock's studio in mid-June. The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center will receive a royalty on each pair, which list for $50, said Harrison.

She recalls working as a reporter for The New York Times in the late 1980s, and being sent to Springs when the paint-stained wooden floor was found under Masonite floorboards that Pollock installed in 1952.

"All of a sudden the conservators start to make little noises, ooh ah, oh," Harrison said. "So we get down on our hands and knees and we start looking, and the colors keep coming and pretty soon we were all doing it. The joke was Jackson must have put it down when he was drunk, because the sticky side was up." Actually a handyman did the work, she later discovered.

"You think, it's just a paint-covered floor. It's just kind of a mess, really, but it's a fascinating mess because it's got all of the colors, all of the gestures and all of the energy that's in his poured paintings and there it is right there on the floor."

It's impossible to put a price on its value, she said. "It's a document; it's not a work of art because it's an accumulation over time. This covers a seven-year period of his work, the most productive and innovative period."

Solo Chicago show for artist Rashid Johnson

CHICAGO (AP) — For more than a decade, contemporary artist Rashid Johnson has worked almost under the radar, turning out work presented at museums and coveted by collectors around the world.
But in the last year, the Chicago native, whose works made from everyday objects explore his own life story as well as larger issues of black identity, has garnered high-profile attention and awards from the art world. This month he opens his first major solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
"A lot of eyes are on him right now," said Julie Rodrigues Widholm, curator of "Rashid Johnson: Message to Our Folks."
"He's an artist who has been working for 14 years and has never had a major solo exhibition," she said. "We really felt because of that absence it was time."
That timing is excellent. In the last year, Johnson has been included in the prestigious International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, was named a 2012 nominee for the Guggenheim Museum's Hugo Boss Prize and won the High Museum's David C. Driskell prize that honors African-American art and scholarship.
The attention is appreciated, Johnson said, but he's more interested in the discourse and dialogue around his work. "When there's a giant buzz about you, you're the last person to know," he said during an interview.
Johnson, who now works in New York, uses everyday materials — everything from books to mirrors to shea butter to plants — to create sculptures that reflect his own life story while exploring the black experience. In a video on the museum website, he recalls growing up "enveloped in this Afrocentric conversation. We celebrated Kwanzaa, my mother wore dashikis." Then "one day they weren't wearing dashikis anymore," he said. He uses art and humor to explore "that transition from Afrocentrism" to "your parents becoming middle-class soccer moms."
The Chicago exhibition spans Johnson's body of work, emphasizing the last five years. It includes references to major African-American cultural figures and influences, like W.E.B. DuBois, Miles Davis and Public Enemy, and consists of a variety of media, including photography, video, sculpture and paintings.
Johnson describes himself as a middle-class black kid growing up in the Chicago-area, interested in graffiti, theater and photography. His work, he said, often times is autobiographical.
"It's an introduction to people of a different black experience," Johnson said.
Widholm sees several themes running through Johnson's work, but focuses on identity.
"He is making work that is personal to counteract the expectation of a black artist speaking for all black artists," she said. "His references and his work allude to artists, musicians, political figures, sports figures, who in one way or another stepped outside of tradition."
His future, Widholm said, is bright.
"I'm really excited to see how his work creates dialogue in different contexts," she said. "There's no limit really to what he can accomplish artistically."
The title, "Message to Our Folks," is taken from a 1969 avant-garde album in which musicians used found objects to make percussion and redefine jazz.
The exhibition is in Chicago through Aug. 5. It will travel to the Miami Art Museum, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis.

Quiara Alegria Hudes wins Pulitzer Prize for drama

NEW YORK (AP) — Quiara Alegria Hudes's play "Water by the Spoonful," about an Iraq war veteran struggling to find his place in the world, has won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for drama, leaving its author in a "daze."
The drama, which was produced last fall at Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut, was called an "imaginative play about the search for meaning" by the Columbia University's prize board on Monday.
"I'm still kind of in a daze about it but I'm very excited," she said by phone from Middletown, Conn., where she is teaching a play writing workshop to undergraduates at Wesleyan University. "I'm really delighted that something that was a little off the beaten path was considered."
Hudes, 34, previously wrote the book for the Broadway show "In the Heights," which won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2008. Her play "Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue" was a finalist for the Pulitzer in 2007.
She found out she's won the Pulitzer while checking her phone during a break in the class. Hudes says she yelped and some of her students asked her what was wrong. "I think I looked like the blood had drained from my face," she said. "They said, 'Is everything OK?' I said, 'Yes,' and they all applauded."
In "Water by the Spoonful," a soldier returns from war to Philadelphia and struggles to put aside the images that haunt him while his mother, a recovering addict, battles her own demons. It has characters from all around the world because much of it is set in an Internet chat room.
"The play was a new direction for me," said Hudes. "In a really exciting way, I felt like I had been writing for long enough that I really was very sure on why I was writing. But I also had been writing for long enough that I wanted to go in a new direction."
The drama award, which includes a $10,000 prize, is "for a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life," according to the official guidelines. The production also must have opened during 2011 to be eligible for this year's award.
Hudes graduated from public school in Philadelphia, got her bachelor's in music from Yale University and an M.F.A. in playwriting from Brown University, where she studied with Paula Vogel, the playwright of "How I Learned to Drive." Many of her works are set in north Philadelphia.
In "Water by the Spoonful," Hudes included characters far from Philadelphia — from places like California and Japan. "As I was writing this play, I felt more at home than ever," she said. "I am myself of a mixed background. I'm half Puerto Rican and half Jewish and so, in some ways, living in many worlds at once is where I feel most at home."
Her other works include "Barrio Grrrl!," a children's musical about a 9-year-old who fancies herself a superhero and which premiered at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2009, and "26 Miles," the story of a mother and her sick daughter which premiered at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre in 2009.
"Water by the Spoonful" is the second of a planned trilogy that began with her "Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue," a play about a young Marine coming to terms with his service in Iraq and his father's service in Vietnam. The third part, "The Happiest Song Plays Last," is slated to make its world premiere next year at The Goodman Theatre in Chicago.
Hudes' play beat out two other finalists: "Other Desert Cities" by Jon Robin Baitz, a witty drama about an affluent California couple whose daughter has written a memoir that threatens to reveal family secrets, and "Sons of the Prophet" by Stephen Karam, a play about a Lebanese-American family that blends comedy and tragedy.
Last year's winner was Bruce Norris' "Clybourne Park," a play currently on Broadway that examines race relations and the effects of modern gentrification. Previous playwrights honored include August Wilson, Edward Albee, Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.
Hudes hopes the prize will extend the life of her play and get it mounted in New York and, of course, her hometown of Philadelphia, "which I love to bits."