Southcoast Artists Index

Southcoast Artists Index is a community oral-history project in podcast form. Its guests are the makers, performers and supporters of a South Coast creative community that includes Fairhaven, Massachusetts. It makes more sense as a set of series than as one show. Each series has its own host, and some have their own sponsor. Scott Bishop hosts the Fairhaven Artist Podcast Series, sponsored in part by a Fairhaven Cultural Council grant, and introduces the town's historical and contemporary visual and performing artists. Dave Reese hosts the Fiber Optics Center's Jazz Podcast Series, a ten-part run meant to preserve the memory of jazz artists who came to and from the South Coast. Sean Fitzgerald hosts the Gallery X Documentation Project Series. That series comes out of a plan to scan the gallery's whole collection of news clippings, posters, flyers and photographs so they can be archived and mined for information later. Ron Fortier leads other conversations, including 'Podcast Episode 229: MIDORI EVANS', and there are live editions such as 'Live From AHA! - October', recorded at Play Arcade. What a listener gets is texture. Tyler Kingsland admits he is not the best at managing stress and describes fitting family time around an early start and the after-school pickup. Myles Goulart-Romano explains handing harp and vocal tracks to a collaborator, who added spatial sounds, breaths and wind that move around inside the song. Russ Campoli's conversation turns to trips to the Clark Terry Jazz Festival in New Hampshire, a parent group raising travel money, and snow coming down on the ride back to the hotel. That jazz episode ends with the story of a musician who flew in from a tour for a party, which shows what Russ meant to other players. Memory is part of the material. In 'Gallery X Series Episode 8: Mary Rapoza', Mary Rapoza and others in the room work out on tape which outdoor project she designed and roughly when. They land on the plaza, not the memorial garden. The exchange stays in. With Midori Evans the talk goes further afield, from the push to revive Polaroid to how the art world's center moved after the war from Paris, London and Milan toward New York and Los Angeles. The tone throughout is friendly and unhurried, and Ron Fortier signs off by asking people to take care of themselves and be kind to others. At AHA, the host states the aim plainly: document as many people as possible so their legacies last for great-grandchildren and beyond.