Giving POV to Oddball Art

Sue Schardt, of Dorchester, Massachusetts, launched Margin Media to give emerging artists a platform for expression. In one of her blog posts on the site, for example, Sue Schardt references an article about Manny Farber, a painter whose side job was writing movie reviews.

Manny Farber is best known for naming termite art. Mr. Farber began his career at the University of California, San Diego in 1970, where he taught and worked. His movie criticism was published in the New Republic, the Nation, and elsewhere. His writing style was described as punchy and witty, with a close observation to detail and a keen awareness of the overlooked.

In an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2018, his art work reflects this connection between art and the movies. The show opened with the painter’s stationery, candy, and auteur drawings, which were done using oil, ink, and pastel on paper. Candy reminiscent of that sold in movie theaters and other objects were also subjects of the works.

Mr. Farber makes an obvious connection between the mundane and what appears on the movie screen. He called this termite art because it gave definition to the larger-than-life depictions burrowed in the unpretentious and unfashionable act of watching a film. 

Margin Media and the Finding Sanctuary Multi-Media Production

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NFCB, Community Counts, Bader Award

Sue Schardt is a recognized public media trail blazer who has successful developed initiatives to support greater diversity in public media and to expand coverage to more people in local communities across the United States. In her capacity as president of SchardtMEDIA and, more recently, as executive producer of Localore and CEO of AIR, she is sought out as an expert presenter by media organizations across the United States and overseas. She was among those invited to the Kiev by Ukrainian national public broadcasting leaders interested in the formation of non-profit media in the United States; in Moscow, her remarks focused on podcasting and emerging media innovation and, in Melbourne, her presentation was among those concerned with creating successful, co-collaborative productions. Closes to home, Schardt has been an active advisor to and participate with the Third Coast International Audio Festival, Greater Public, the Public Radio Program Directors Association (PRPD), Public Media Journalists’ Association (PMJA), and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB). The latter recognized Schardt with a lifetime achievement award in 2018.

More on NFCB: NFCB has enhanced the impact of community media while fostering innovation in public media services. The organization supports local radio stations through a suite of customized services that range from education and representation offerings to organizational consulting and peer-to-peer exchange. The NFCB also leads initiatives, such as the Community Counts program, an effort designed to strengthen service sustainability amongst community radio stations in a time of evolving technology and limited resources. The program, which spans 18 months, provides a blend of expert-led training and peer-based learning to 10 radio stations who meet eligibility requirements and complete an application process. Visit https://nfcb.org


For more on PRPD, visit https://prpd.org/

For more on PMJA, visit https://www.pmja.org/

For more on Greater Public, visit https://www.greaterpublic.org/

For more on Third Coast International Audio Festival, visit https://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/

For more about Sue Schardt, visit https://www.MarginMedia.org

Compassionate Journalism

Media influencer Sue Schardt has close to 30 years of experience in communications and has been the executive producer of Localore since 2010. Sue Schardt is currently operating an independent production group, MarginMedia.org, to continue to develop new collaborative work with a diverse range of people living in local communities. 

In a recent post, she muses about compassion, reflecting back on a childhood fainting spell and the tenderness of her elementary school principal. Schardt continues, then, describing her experience with the Red Cross food pantry, and the Boston public city school teachers who line up in their cars to collect and transport food to the homes of their students across the city during this time of hardship.

This emphasis on compassion in a time of pandemic connects to Schardt's approach to journalism and public media. In a 2017 report to the public media field, “Break Form, Making Stories with and for the People, the ethos of Localore is expressed in the view that the core tenants of journalism - fairness, objectivity, and balance - also includes love.

Today, Schardt believes even more strongly that today's chaos and strife present tremendous challenges to those we entrust to bring us the news, and that journalists who lead with compassion are key in confronting the rampant cruelty and divisiveness that mark our present reality. 

Journalistic Purpose During a Time of Pandemic and Unrest

An executive producer at Margin Media, Sue Schardt believes stories have the power to bring about positive change. Her work is rooted in an understanding how stories make it possible for people to recognize themselves as part of a larger whole, and that media, when directed with clear, positive intention, is an important unifying force when uncertainty and fear prevail.

In a recent post on her company site, she shares her insights into the present moment, with people across the planet converging in ways that, even six months ago, were unimaginable. The emergence of millions of “brave and necessary” protesters moving against racial injustice, a pandemic dismantling normative structures of governance and economies are, together impacting people in every corner of the world. “We must recognize this moment of profound, shared vulnerability, when rigorous journalism and our best storytellers can lead us to a better world,” says Schardt. “There is a new calling.”

Break Form: Making stories with and for the people is a report published by the American Press Institute analyzing “Localore: Finding America,” a production Schardt created and oversaw as Executive Producer for ten years. She stresses the relevance of lessons of Localore for today’s journalists. One of the project’s lead producers Steve Mencher worked with disparate faith communities in Kansas City. He describes how the experience influenced his approach to journalism. “I believe in importance of fairness, objectivity, and balance,” says Mencher. “I’ve learned, too, there is also love. Love and the core tenets of journalism can go together.”

Read Break Form: Making stories with and for the people:
https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/break-form/

For the latest on Sue Schardt, visit MarginMedia.org.

 

Anti-celebrity Termite Artist Making Change from Inside Public Media

Sue Schardt operates Margin Media out of a studio located on the top of Savin Hill in Dorchester, Massachusetts. She oversees productions, and, as executive producer, she draws on her extensive experience working as a creative, socially conscious leader in public media. What many in her professional circles don’t know is that Schardt is also a musician and free-form radio DJ on WMBR-FM based at the Massachusetts Institute. She was among the artists featured in a major exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), “One Day at a Time: Manny Farber and Termite Art.”

Described by the Los Angeles Times as an “anti-celebrity” show, the exhibition had at its centerpiece paintings by Manny Farber, who died in 2008 and was better known to the public as a movie critic than as an artist. One unique aspect of Farber’s colorful, motion-infused still-life pieces is that they were not presented from a side view, but from above, framed on surfaces such as tabletops.

Interwoven with Farber’s still-life paintings were the works of three dozen artists, including Schardt, who were not so much influenced by him but who shared an affinity and sensibility. This was brought together “sympathetically” by MOCA’s former chief curator, Helen Molesworth, as her “swan song” exhibition. As reviewed in the Times, the end result was “user-friendly yet enjoyably strange.”

For a review of the Manny Farber exhibition, visit

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-manny-farber-termite-moca-20181019-story.html

Anti-celebrity Termite Artist Making Change from Inside Public Media

Sue Schardt operates Margin Media out of a studio located on the top of Savin Hill in Dorchester, Massachusetts. She oversees productions, and, as executive producer, she draws on her extensive experience working as a creative, socially conscious leader in public media. What many in her professional circles don’t know is that Schardt is also a musician and free-form radio DJ on WMBR-FM based at the Massachusetts Institute. She was among the artists featured in a major exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), “One Day at a Time: Manny Farber and Termite Art.”

Described by the Los Angeles Times as an “anti-celebrity” show, the exhibition had at its centerpiece paintings by Manny Farber, who died in 2008 and was better known to the public as a movie critic than as an artist. One unique aspect of Farber’s colorful, motion-infused still-life pieces is that they were not presented from a side view, but from above, framed on surfaces such as tabletops.

Interwoven with Farber’s still-life paintings were the works of three dozen artists, including Schardt, who were not so much influenced by him but who shared an affinity and sensibility. This was brought together “sympathetically” by MOCA’s former chief curator, Helen Molesworth, as her “swan song” exhibition. As reviewed in the Times, the end result was “user-friendly yet enjoyably strange.”

For a review of the Manny Farber exhibition, visit
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-manny-farber-termite-moca-20181019-story.html