We came across this website for WA’s creative sector while searching for places to spread the word about our sites. Creative Crops is a volunteer run network where those in creative industries can find out about new jobs, funding opportunities, studio spaces, call outs and heaps of other cool stuff. Check out our listing here for websites for creative industries.
At age 23 Eudora Welty sent the below letter to the New Yorker looking for work. Disappointingly the editors seemed immune to Welty’s intelligent charisma — her letter produced no response. Only years later would the magazine obliquely recognise that initial failure by eventually publishing some of her short stories.
Exactly four decades after her brilliant plea for employment, Welty won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel The Optimist’s Daughter — a title inadvertently poignant in the context of her New Yorker rejection — and seven years later, in 1980, she became the first woman to receive the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom in literature.
March 15, 1933
Gentlemen,
I suppose you’d be more interested in even a sleight-o’-hand trick than you’d be in an application for a position with your magazine, but as usual you can’t have the thing you want most.
I am 23 years old, six weeks on the loose in N.Y. However, I was a New Yorker for a whole year in 1930-31 while attending advertising classes in Columbia’s School of Business. Actually I am a southerner, from Mississippi, the nation’s most backward state. Ramifications include Walter H. Page, who, unluckily for me, is no longer connected with Doubleday-Page, which is no longer Doubleday-Page, even. I have a B.A. (’29) from the University of Wisconsin, where I majored in English without a care in the world. For the last eighteen months I was languishing in my own office in a radio station in Jackson, Miss., writing continuities, dramas, mule feed advertisements, santa claus talks, and life insurance playlets; now I have given that up.
As to what I might do for you — I have seen an untoward amount of picture galleries and 15¢ movies lately, and could review them with my old prosperous detachment, I think; in fact, I recently coined a general word for Matisse’s pictures after seeing his latest at the Marie Harriman: concubineapple. That shows you how my mind works — quick, and away from the point. I read simply voraciously, and can drum up an opinion afterwards.
Since I have bought an India print, and a large number of phonograph records from a Mr. Nussbaum who picks them up, and a Cezanne Bathers one inch long (that shows you I read e. e. cummings I hope), I am anxious to have an apartment, not to mention a small portable phonograph. How I would like to work for you! A little paragraph each morning — a little paragraph each night, if you can’t hire me from daylight to dark, although I would work like a slave. I can also draw like Mr. Thurber, in case he goes off the deep end. I have studied flower painting.
There is no telling where I may apply, if you turn me down; I realize this will not phase you, but consider my other alternative: the U of N.C. offers for $12.00 to let me dance in Vachel Lindsay’s Congo. I congo on. I rest my case, repeating that I am a hard worker.
Truly yours,
Eudora Welty
Have trouble expressing yourself without your Emojis? (What, no Emoji‽) Here are some forgotten punctuation marks that might do the trick.
So next time someone sends you an annoying email, don’t forget your snark mark.~
⁂
There used to be so many well-dressed gentlemen in Fremantle, this morning there was only one.
The landmark Chelsea Hotel’s Storefront Gallery is currently hosting a Blondie 40th anniversary exhibition, running from the 23rd – 29th September.
Of course the Chelsea has been home to many famous visitors such as Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and the Warhol Superstars, including Edie Sedgwick who set fire to her room in 1966. It was also home to many of the Titanic Survivors who arrived at Pier 54 on the White Star Line after the sinking. Over it’s 134 year history the Chelsea has had many more interesting residents including the painter Alphaeus Philemon Cole, who lived at the hotel for 35 years until his death in 1988 at age 112, and Arthur C. Clarke who wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey while staying at the Chelsea.
The hotel has had interesting deaths too with Dylan Thomas dying of pneumonia on November 9, 1953, and this is the place where 20 year old Nancy Spungen, girlfriend of Sid Vicious, was found stabbed to death in room 100 on October 12, 1978.
With all this history let’s not forget Ruth Harkness, the American adventurer, fashion designer and socialite who brought the first live giant panda from China to the U.S. In 1934 her husband Bill Harkness had traveled to China in search of a panda, but died of throat cancer in Shanghai 2 years later. Ruth then decided to launch her own panda mission and with the help of explorer Quentin Young and British naturalist, Gerald Russell, she brought back a baby panda, Su Lin, not in a cage but wrapped in her arms. She then resided at the famous Chelsea.
We’re not sure if the exhibition will be as interesting as the hotel itself but we love the flyer nonetheless.
Ruth Harkness with her panda Su Lin
Here’s Park(ing) Day in action on Essex street; one of Freo’s tiny parks filled almost to capacity!
Urban open space is a big part of what makes cities and towns vibrant and inviting, but it’s not always easy to find. Today there will be more than usual public space in Fremantle when Park(ing) Day takes place and parking bays will evolve into cool spaces of public art, music and of course green parks to lounge in.
Park(ing) Day originated in San Francisco in 2005 and now takes place annually in 60 cities in 35 countries. We’ve selected a few of the most interesting images from previous years in the US of A.
What could be better than fewer cars and more places to hang out, maybe Park(ing) Day should become a weekly event! Now could we just invent a frisbee that we drive to work?
Washington DC
Los Angeles CA
Albany NY
San Francisco CA
To continue on our space theme this week here is a 1953 illustration by Chelsey Bonestell titled ‘Exploration of Mars’. We spotted it in Smith Journal and it made us happy just looking at it.
We are so excited to launch our new website and blog. This is where we plan on sharing cool/random art and design finds that we come across day to day. Rather than blog about websites and other internet biz (well there might be a bit of this) we hope to use this space to share awesome creative finds. We also plan to have some guest bloggers from the art and design world too, which is pretty exciting.
We’ve been building websites for a few years now and have made all sorts of sites from plastic surgeons to diamond energy discs (we aren’t sure what these are either?) and a whole lot of plumbers in between. Along the way we also built some really beautiful sites for artists, dancers and photographers to name a few. We realised it was building these sites that we enjoyed the most, so we have decided to specialise in this field and relaunch our website as part of this.
We all come from creative backgrounds ourselves, be it fashion and textiles, illustration or multimedia and building websites for those in creative industries gives us our own creative outlet. It inspires us to stay in touch with everything awesome.
To celebrate this new beginning for us here is an image from Stanley Kubrik’s filmic masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Within a fabulous antiseptic colour code of white on acid yellow, the Rubik’s cube geometry captures something immortal about the kitsch of female servitude under future capitalist conditions made worse by the inconvenience of zero gravity.