Tonight, and last night, too, I attended the fundraisers for
Muse Arts Warehouse. Each evening, I was in different company, though there were some who were repeat attendees like myself. Why, you ask? What was the big attraction?
Honestly, I was there for moral support of the indomitable
JinHi Soucy Rand, mistress supreme of Muse Arts. I have been friends with her since the days before she and Mark wed. I was even at their wedding uder the oaks of Officers Row on Tybee, back in 2000. She is very talented, both on and off the stage, and has been in several movies filmed locally (
Forrest Gump and
The Gingerbread Man immediately spring to mind).
She and Mark took over the space in the old Seaboard Freight building early last year, initially naming it Indigo Arts Center. Concerned that the name of
an art gallery in town might lead to confusion with both those performing and those attending events, the
space was rechristened as Muse Arts Warehouse on July 1, 2010.
The space is available to all artists and has been a home for SCAD seniors with final art shows, films by cinema groups, music from bands and solo performers near and far, and, of course, theatre works by various local groups. It's one of the most versatile places in town! Also, unlike many other downtown venues, it has on-site, free, and abundant parking. That alone makes it unique.
As one would expect, for such a large space, large money is needed, on a regular basis, to keep the lights on and rent paid.
To the rescue ride the Drama Bums, a local repertory troupe, which is said to consist mostly of SCAD staff and students. For this fundraiser, they performed "
Lovecrafted: An Evening With Cthulhu". Briefly, the event consisted of a series of staged readings of the written works of
H.P. Lovecraft, with
Chris Soucy giving introductions to the pieces and lending filial support.
There were also various unique pieces of art, inspired by that horror fiction, and some other oddities, available to the highest bidder at the silent auctions. I had mentioned the event to my best friend Paul and his wife and they had professed themselves - and her brother, too! - to be avid fans of Lovecraft and tasked me with informing them of what items were present so they could bid, from El Cerrito, CA, through me. Sure, I could do that for them!
Now, just to set the record straight, I am
not a Lovecraft fan or a follower of Cthulhu. (You cannot imagine how much I had to practice just to say that name!) No. That is largely because I am not a fan of horror. Nope, not really. Sure, I like
Twilight Zone and
Tales From The Crypt, I have to leave Stephen King and
Freddie Krueger to other folks.
Like I said earlier, I was there as a supporter of the venue.
And along the way, I found there were some short stories by Lovecraft that held some appeal for me. I especially liked "
The White Ship", most likely for its nautical theme, but also for its haunted lyrical qualities.
I did "win" several of the auctions, too, with my biggest prize, in every sense of the word, being the Cthulhu mask shown above. Marvelous, isn't it? I obtained all of the pieces I had bid on for the Wests out West, too - what a coup!
But my favorite piece, I do believe, is this.
It's an electronic vacuum tube,
similar to those that powered the refrigerator-sized main-frames
I maintained in the US Navy.
But that's not
its function! No sir!
It's used in a
theremin!
You know, those musical instruments
that are used for spooky sound effects?
And now I have a theremin's
spooky tooth.
Very cool.
