Sassenach said:
If you've written 450 newspaper articles and haven't sold a single one, then, with all due respect, you need to study the form.
No, I don't. I'm a highly-experienced journalist and I'll send you clips if you want to see any. Unfortunately, the New York Times has impossible standards.
Aw, what the heck. Below is the last feature I wrote for the Buffalo State College Record:
A boy and his whistling machine
BY Joshua Le Suer
Let us take a mental tour of the fresh installation at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center: "Beyond/In Western New York 2005."
First stop: Gallery One.
Meg Knowles's Wet Spot": While craw-, shark- and goldfish dreamfully paddle about, a projected hand swishes about in the background at hyperspeed.
Joe Miller's "Offering": An oil-on-paint of two Wonderland Alices clutching hands and staring up at what Burchfield-Penney preparator Tom Holt calls, "this greenish, sort-of-sci-fi, uncomfortable, very-eerie-looking sky."
Alfonso Volo's "The Worm Stitch Extension" and "The Plush Mouse's Furry Jockstrap Rhizome": Crocheted yarn is suspended from the ceiling and adorned with holographic glitter, as well as corsage pins and needles.
But just as you turn to venture further into Gallery Two, you hear it: "Tweedle-tweet-wuh-woo-vee-vee-twiddle-twit."
You turn and see nothing but a pair of black speakers on top of a white cabinet.
Again, you hear the strange whistling sound, a sound so very human, without a hint of synthesization. Tentatively, you whistle back. The speakers match you, trill for trill. You whistle the first few bars of "Three Blind Mice." The speakers mimic you perfectly, then suddenly dogleg into Beethoven's "5th" with German undertones.
You've just made the acquaintance of Marc Bohlen's remarkable "Two Whistling Machines," a work of technological art consisting of computers, polyethylene, electronics and silk, according to the placard.
Holt has become somewhat attached to Bohlen's whistling machines.
"I actually feel bad turning it off at the end of the day," Holt said. "I walk by it throughout the day and have these five-minute, whistled conversations. But, essentially, I have to kill it every day and turn it back on the next day."
Not only are the whistling machines fluent and fluid conversationalists, capable of concocting their own lilting variations, they're also very well-traveled.
"The fact is, this piece is shown as far as Spain and Croatia, and sometimes when it whistles back at you here in America, it might whistle back at you a whistle it heard in Spain," Holt said. "It speaks internationally."
While Holt enjoys the company of the whistling machines, he said the honey-speakered contraptions irk some of his colleagues.
"A lot of people here don't like it because it annoys the hell out of them because it whistles all day," Holt said. "But if you like what it has to say, as I do, well then, it's a pleasure to talk to."
Holt said that not only do the machines often hold high-pitched conversations with art connoisseurs, but they also converse with each other. But only when nobody else is around, because they don't want anyone else to hear what they're saying.
Even though the machines may be a bit shy, they're also compassionate to the inferior whistler.
"It has a perfectly breathy whistle, and [Bohen] specifically designed it to have a breathy whistle, so as to not intimidate poor whistlers," Holt said.
While these little tweedlers are a marvelment, many of the other pieces offer an equally intricate experience.
"Offering" tells of the distinct horror of living in a world where anything might descend from the sky at any time," Holt said. "The fear you see on their faces is the same fear we all experience from things that come out of the sky, such as suicide bombers, U.F.O. sightings...the ozone...These characters are just like us."
Betsy Manning, assistant to the director of Burchfield-Penney, found her attention drawn to a panel depicting a young child brandishing a pistol, as though it were a Tonka truck.
"The child with the gun makes you think because many children kill each other with guns, " Manning said. "It's a beautiful piece, but it really brings to mind today's society."
Rebekah Sipos, a junior art history student, appreciated the diversity of the show. But, when asked which piece stood out for her, chose Wet Spot."
"[It's] not just something hanging on the wall...," Sipos said.
While many of these pieces raise questions about all sorts of social issues, more than any other, it's Bohlen's "Whistling Machines" which beg the question, Is this art?
"I could easily argue that it's art because it communicates and it explores and it has a sense of design, which is created by the artist," Holt said. "So, if you think about it, it fulfills all the criteria of what makes a work of art."