ABCDE Arts&Style sunday, june 20, 2010 FILM


Jedi nights At the Silverdocs festival, some selections avoid the dark side. E5


BLOGS AND CHATS washingtonpost.com/style Interview From composer John Adams, random thoughts in free verse E2 Phil Kennicott Architect Michael Graves brings a disabled person’s viewpoint. E3


Celebrations, E9 Cul de Sac, E10 Movie Guide, E7 Horoscope, E10 Lively Arts Guide, E5 ON LOVE


Reunited They were high school sweethearts. After 35 years and a Facebook reconnection, they’re married. E8


E AX FN FS LF PW DC BD PG AA FD HO MN MS SM


PHOTO: MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POST; ILLUSTRATIONS: DAVID CLARK HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU, KID: Gene Weingarten and son Dan with the characters they created, Barney and Clyde, and, below, Lucretia (Barney’s trophy wife). tDrawn A ogether


Through a comic strip, a father and son overcome their troubled past to find a better punch line


Line between activist and artist blurs for these creative organizers


by David Montgomery


The artists are just back from Arizona, where they have been playing activists, marching against that unforgiving new immigration law. Now the erstwhile activists are at Bus- boys and Poets at Fifth and K streets NW, where they are playing artists again with a bunch of new work. The lights go down, the digital slide show comes up, and what we see is . . . art? Activism? Both? Neither? Unclear, but let César Maxit be our


guide. Maxit, 34, was born in Argentina during the “Dirty War,” the state-sponsored vio-


lence against leftist dissidents during the ’70s and early ’80s.His parents made it to the United States when he was 6 years old. He’s at the center of a potent little ferment in Washington that toggles between creative political organizing and politically organizing creativity. On this recent evening at Busboys, wearing a T-shirt that says “Legalize Ari- zona,” Maxit is holding a microphone and manipulating a laptop to call up im- ages.


One is a poster designed by Maxit, one of his more straightforward works. The lettering says “Solidarity Black & Brown.” The image is a stylized silhou- ette of a Latino and an African American walking arm-in-arm. The Latino wears a shirt that says “Undocumented and Un- afraid.” The African American’s shirt says “Deport Me Instead.”


artists continued on E6 by Gene Weingarten


s she was doing laundry one day 12 years ago, my wife found a crumpled de- tention slip in the pocket of our son’s jeans. Dan was in middle school. A teach- er had written: “Daniel Meltzer to the office. Disruptive behavior, disobeying instructions! Giving Adam Cohen’s name instead of his own when asked!” ¶


This indignant document was a forensic gold mine, damning evidence of an audacious, multitiered crime: Clearly, there had been a substitute teacher. Dan Weingarten, 13, had flagrantly misbehaved, and when reprimanded, had given a false name. Caught at this, he brazenly surrendered another name, also a lie, but delivered with sufficiently con- vincing aplomb. His small, smug, pseudonymous self was then dispatched to the princi- pal’s office, where he never arrived — as evidenced by the very existence of this piece of paper. Instead, he became a hallway fugitive until his next class. ¶ The insubordination — the casual insolence of it all, the jubilant contempt for authority — was jaw-dropping. ¶ As a father, I knew exactly what to do. I took that slip of paper, framed it, and hung it on the wall of my home office, where it remains today.


weingarten continued on E4


On the march, in a circle of change and revelation


Bullies of style: Coco Chanel’s fragrant power play. Page E9


MARVIN JOSEPH/THE WASHINGTON POST


MESSAGING: Organizer Favianna Rodriguez also creates posters, including this one of Justice Sonia Sotomayor.


by Robin Givhan


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