ABCDE Arts&Style sunday, august 8, 2010
INTERVIEW Time’s still
on his side Legendary actor Robert Duvall is almost 80, but he’s not slowing down. E2
BLOGS AND CHATS
washingtonpost.com/style Blues Archie Edwards may be gone, but they’re still playing the barbershop blues. E3 Hip-hop In the Middle East, Palestinian refugee rappers’ voices spill out across borders. E4
Ask Amy, E12 Celebrations, E11 Cul de Sac, E11 Movie Guide, E9 Horoscope, E11 Lively Arts Guide, E4
ON LOVE And now
they’re a team Jocelyn Hines and Jason Thomas’s first wedding attempt failed, but this one didn’t. E10
AIRWAVES: Dan Steinhilber, trained as a painter, has often explored that art form’s legacy in his works in other media. Below, he stands before a piece in a show at
Washington’s former Signal 66 gallery, for which he used knotted balloons to simulate a classic “action painting” of the 1950s. As the balloons deflate, some of its “action” will fade away, too.
E AX FN FS LF PW DC BD PG AA FD HO MN MS SM
If you can eat it, drink it, or unpack it this D.C. artist just might work with it
BY BLAKE GOPNIK
The Steinhilber variations I
magine a group show of contemporary art. It includes a manly action-painting made from knotted bal- loons. (As they deflate over days, this pseudo-Jackson Pollock goes limp.) Near it is an elegant sculptural column, Brancusi-esque, built of hangers. In a separate room, two robotic vacuums try, hopelessly, to clean up a storm of packing peanuts. Farther on, there’s a heat lamp mounted over a museum pedestal, with the glowing space between them counting as sculpture. ¶See such a show, and you might think its curator had
assembled a tight little package of art. ¶But would you imagine they were all by the same artist? ¶Dan Steinhil- ber, one of the leading lights of the Washington scene, made all those works, over a professional career that turns 10 this year. They’ve earned him solos from Baltimore to Houston and group shows from Toronto to Siena. This summer, they’ve also earned him a residency at Socrates Sculpture Park, on the waterfront in Queens. ¶Encoun- tered here and there, over the years, those Steinhilbers have sometimes come across as one-liners. But looking at Steinhilber’s entire practice, those one-liners start to string together into a promising novella. ¶ To do him jus- tice, clearly what Steinhilber needs is a mid-career retrospective. Since museums have yet to step up to the plate, we’re giving him one in our pages. A selection of Dan Steinhilber’s work appears on pages E6-7.
MUSIC Finally walking her own line
Rosanne Cash’s candid memoir tells her side of an extraordinary story
by Joe Heim
new york — Rosanne Cash’s parents didn’t live to hear her side of the story. Not the official version, anyway. Not the smartly packaged, beautifully written memoir, “Composed,” that arrives in stores Tuesday and serves up a rich, pen- etrating, often witty look at the life of the first daughter of Johnny Cash and his first wife, Vivian Liberto Cash Distin.
Her parents won’t read this unblinking
examination of her father’s lifelong battle with narcotics addiction, the pain and bitterness her mother carried with her, their eventual divorce, her own self- doubt and anxiety, her failed marriage to Rodney Crowell, a devastating miscar- riage, the months-long loss of her voice and the extensive surgery to relieve pres- sure on her brain stem in 2007 that re- quired a year’s recovery. Nor will they read the loving eulogies she wrote for each of them or her descriptions of the enormous pride she has in her own chil- dren, her happy marriage to — and musi- cal partnership with — John Leventhal, and the strength she found in overcom- ing the obstacles she faced.
Sitting down for an interview in the of-
fices of her record label last week, Cash, who has a dozen albums and 11 No. 1 country singles to her credit, said the book is the work of which she is most proud. And that her parents are not around to read it, she says, “is heart- breaking.” Of course, if they were still around, she admits, she probably would not have been able to write it at all. Her mother’s deep sensitivity and her own re- luctance to hurt either of them kept her pen in check. A decade in gestation, the 245-page book does not simply chronicle her life as the offspring of a legendary musicmaker
cash continued on E5 HELAYNE SEIDMAN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
A PARADOX: Rosanne Cash, whose memoir comes out on Tuesday, grew up with famous parents guarding her privacy. Her regret is that they won’t be able to read it.
COURTESY OF DAN STEINHILBER
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