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Blank Forms 07: The Cowboy's Dreams of Home
Edited by Lawrence Kumpf and Joe Bucciero with contributions from Angel Bat Dawid, Joe Bucciero, Charles Curtis, René Daumal, Thulani Davis, Anthony Elms, Ciarán Finlayson, Jessica Hagedorn, Judith Hamann, Sarah Hennies, Louise Landes Levi, Alan Licht, and Tashi Wada.
The Cowboy’s Dreams of Home, the seventh Blank Forms anthology, takes its name from a psychedelic Wild West reverie of Texan singer-songwriter and visual artist Terry Allen. This volume privileges new texts including a retrospective interview with Allen conducted by ICA Philadelphia chief curator Anthony Elms; a conversation between multidisciplinary writers—and longtime friends—Thulani Davis and Jessica Hagedorn on the occasion of Davis’s latest poetry collection, Nothing But The Music, recently published by Blank Forms Editions; a recent discussion between composer Sarah Hennies and cellist Judith Hamann about their recent collaboration, which is included on Hamann’s Music for Cello and Humming, released by Blank Forms Editions last fall; and a conversation with composer-performers Tashi Wada and Charles Curtis on the heels of a recent compilation of Curtis’s work, Performances & Recordings 1998–2018, produced by Wada. Each of these interviews sheds light on the particularities of the artists’ careers and methods in terms both formal and casual, practical and theoretical.
In addition to these dialogues, this book features new critical reflections on three artists whose work Blank Forms has presented: the legendary jazz percussionist and healer Milford Graves, by Ciarán Finlayson; English multimedia artist Graham Lambkin and his beguiling 2011 album Amateur Doubles, by Alan Licht; and the UK-based experimental music trio Still House Plants, by Joe Bucciero. These articles mine historical, social, and theoretical contexts, filling gaps in the existing literature on the given artist-subjects. New and archival poems and writing about poetry complement these interviews and essays, including rare texts by Davis, Hagedorn, and René Daumal—the latter translated by Louise Landes Levi—and a suite of Auto-Mythological writings commissioned from Chicago-based composer and musician Angel Bat Dawid.
The Cowboy’s Dreams of Home, the seventh Blank Forms anthology, takes its name from a psychedelic Wild West reverie of Texan singer-songwriter and visual artist Terry Allen. This volume privileges new texts including a retrospective interview with Allen conducted by ICA Philadelphia chief curator Anthony Elms; a conversation between multidisciplinary writers—and longtime friends—Thulani Davis and Jessica Hagedorn on the occasion of Davis’s latest poetry collection, Nothing But The Music, recently published by Blank Forms Editions; a recent discussion between composer Sarah Hennies and cellist Judith Hamann about their recent collaboration, which is included on Hamann’s Music for Cello and Humming, released by Blank Forms Editions last fall; and a conversation with composer-performers Tashi Wada and Charles Curtis on the heels of a recent compilation of Curtis’s work, Performances & Recordings 1998–2018, produced by Wada. Each of these interviews sheds light on the particularities of the artists’ careers and methods in terms both formal and casual, practical and theoretical.
In addition to these dialogues, this book features new critical reflections on three artists whose work Blank Forms has presented: the legendary jazz percussionist and healer Milford Graves, by Ciarán Finlayson; English multimedia artist Graham Lambkin and his beguiling 2011 album Amateur Doubles, by Alan Licht; and the UK-based experimental music trio Still House Plants, by Joe Bucciero. These articles mine historical, social, and theoretical contexts, filling gaps in the existing literature on the given artist-subjects. New and archival poems and writing about poetry complement these interviews and essays, including rare texts by Davis, Hagedorn, and René Daumal—the latter translated by Louise Landes Levi—and a suite of Auto-Mythological writings commissioned from Chicago-based composer and musician Angel Bat Dawid.
201 pages, Paperback
Published June 29, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 4, 2025
ANTHONY ELMS
Where to start?
TERRY ALLEN
Don't start at the beginning.
*
(from the first part, an interview with the amazing Terry Allen! this is my first experience with Blank Forms but definitely not my last)
traveling deeper into texas at the moment & seems like the perfect time to start this gem from one of my absolute favorite humans ever (& a damn good writer constantly inspiring me for years! her debut poetry collection was just published & still speechless & more soon re: it!) that was so lovely & lucky to have been gifted to me in January for my birthday.
SO EXCITED. & grateful.
*
contents (not in order)
INTRODUCTION: Lawrence Kumpf
THE EVOLVING WORK: An Exchange between Charles Curtis and Tashi Wada
YOU HAVE TO PUT IT IN MOTION TO REALLY HEAR IT. Anthony Elms in Conversation with Terry Allen
AMATEUR DOUBLES: Alan Licht
SEE TEE'S NEW BLUE'S: Thulani Davis & MING THE MERCILESS: Jessica Hagedorn
MAKING MUSIC IS MYTHMAKING: Angel Bat Dawid
POETRY BLACK, POETRY WHITE: René Daumal
Translated by Louise Landes Levi
THULANI DAVIS AND JESSICA HAGEDORN: in Conversation with Lawrence Kumpf
UNIVERSAL WISDOM: MILFORD GRAVES: Ciarán Finlayson
LOSS: Judith Hamann and Sarah Hennies in Conversation
LOOKING FOR A ROOM: THE MUSIC OF STILL HOUSE PLANTS: Joe Bucciero
*
TA: And I always liked to draw, but I didn't like school. In the mornings, when my folks would get me up and try to get me going, the one thing that I liked to do, that could moti-vate, was drawing. I always pictured a pencil making letters.
There was something about the tactile thing of the pencil lead hitting paper. There's some kind of seduction there. It's worth it. I'll get up, and I'll go do that. That's a real early thought.
An influence, in a sense, was just the tactile quality of the paper and pencil.
When I first applied to art school, just trying to get out of Lubbock, one of the application questions was, "Who is your favorite artist in the world?" And, "Who has most influenced you?" I put Norman Rockwell because we took the Saturday Evening Post, and that was really, literally, the only artist I knew.
AE: I get that.
TA: If I had really been aware, I would've put down comic books.
It just never occurred to me that comic books were art. But I was an avid comic book fan and a classic book reader. Also tattoos.
(11)
*
Also, encountering people that were cold-blooded and serious about making a picture, or making an object, or making a song, where it was real—it wasn't like some hobby they did on the weekends. It was a real cold-blooded act.
(TA, 13)
Where to start?
TERRY ALLEN
Don't start at the beginning.
*
(from the first part, an interview with the amazing Terry Allen! this is my first experience with Blank Forms but definitely not my last)
traveling deeper into texas at the moment & seems like the perfect time to start this gem from one of my absolute favorite humans ever (& a damn good writer constantly inspiring me for years! her debut poetry collection was just published & still speechless & more soon re: it!) that was so lovely & lucky to have been gifted to me in January for my birthday.
SO EXCITED. & grateful.
*
contents (not in order)
INTRODUCTION: Lawrence Kumpf
THE EVOLVING WORK: An Exchange between Charles Curtis and Tashi Wada
YOU HAVE TO PUT IT IN MOTION TO REALLY HEAR IT. Anthony Elms in Conversation with Terry Allen
AMATEUR DOUBLES: Alan Licht
SEE TEE'S NEW BLUE'S: Thulani Davis & MING THE MERCILESS: Jessica Hagedorn
MAKING MUSIC IS MYTHMAKING: Angel Bat Dawid
POETRY BLACK, POETRY WHITE: René Daumal
Translated by Louise Landes Levi
THULANI DAVIS AND JESSICA HAGEDORN: in Conversation with Lawrence Kumpf
UNIVERSAL WISDOM: MILFORD GRAVES: Ciarán Finlayson
LOSS: Judith Hamann and Sarah Hennies in Conversation
LOOKING FOR A ROOM: THE MUSIC OF STILL HOUSE PLANTS: Joe Bucciero
*
TA: And I always liked to draw, but I didn't like school. In the mornings, when my folks would get me up and try to get me going, the one thing that I liked to do, that could moti-vate, was drawing. I always pictured a pencil making letters.
There was something about the tactile thing of the pencil lead hitting paper. There's some kind of seduction there. It's worth it. I'll get up, and I'll go do that. That's a real early thought.
An influence, in a sense, was just the tactile quality of the paper and pencil.
When I first applied to art school, just trying to get out of Lubbock, one of the application questions was, "Who is your favorite artist in the world?" And, "Who has most influenced you?" I put Norman Rockwell because we took the Saturday Evening Post, and that was really, literally, the only artist I knew.
AE: I get that.
TA: If I had really been aware, I would've put down comic books.
It just never occurred to me that comic books were art. But I was an avid comic book fan and a classic book reader. Also tattoos.
(11)
*
Also, encountering people that were cold-blooded and serious about making a picture, or making an object, or making a song, where it was real—it wasn't like some hobby they did on the weekends. It was a real cold-blooded act.
(TA, 13)
September 3, 2021
Blank Forms Editions, a relatively new multi-media enterprise out of Brooklyn, publishing and curating a number of books, concerts, and recordings by and/or about a wide swath of avant-garde figures, with an emphasis on music, especially those artists, poets, and musicians who interweave these arts. For those would recognize the comparisons, I’d say Blank Forms is to music what Cabinet and Esopus have been to the visual arts.
According to their website, “Blank Forms is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting emerging and underrepresented artists working in a range of time-based and interdisciplinary art practices, including experimental music, performance, dance, and sound art. We aim to establish new frameworks to preserve, nurture, and present to broad audiences the work of historic and emerging artists. Blank Forms provides artists with curatorial support, residencies, commissions, and publications to help document, disseminate, and advance their practices.”
The anthology series upholds that end of the mandate with, in this issue, interviews with song writer and artist Terry Allen, poet / performers Thulani Davis and Jessica Hagadoron, composer / performers Charles Curtis and Tashi Wada, a brief essay by René Duval (Louise Landes Levi, trans.), and more. Illustrated throughout with performance photographs and samples of the artists’ works. Many of the musicians also have or will soon have recordings available via Bandcamp. Some of the recordings were originally pressed in the ‘60s or ‘70s and have been out of print since then; other recordings were made decades ago but never released before; and some are new.
In addition to including women and people of color in their mandate, Blank Forms also demonstrates that sites of innovation in the arts are not limited to New York City and Los Angeles.
Blank Forms doesn’t focus on any particular scene, school, or movement, save for those that blend rather than separate the arts and those that push and explore the boundaries and techniques of expression. I love the eclectic approach and the sense of artistic-historic continuity the artists represented by Blank Forms work within and expand. Highly recommended.
According to their website, “Blank Forms is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting emerging and underrepresented artists working in a range of time-based and interdisciplinary art practices, including experimental music, performance, dance, and sound art. We aim to establish new frameworks to preserve, nurture, and present to broad audiences the work of historic and emerging artists. Blank Forms provides artists with curatorial support, residencies, commissions, and publications to help document, disseminate, and advance their practices.”
The anthology series upholds that end of the mandate with, in this issue, interviews with song writer and artist Terry Allen, poet / performers Thulani Davis and Jessica Hagadoron, composer / performers Charles Curtis and Tashi Wada, a brief essay by René Duval (Louise Landes Levi, trans.), and more. Illustrated throughout with performance photographs and samples of the artists’ works. Many of the musicians also have or will soon have recordings available via Bandcamp. Some of the recordings were originally pressed in the ‘60s or ‘70s and have been out of print since then; other recordings were made decades ago but never released before; and some are new.
In addition to including women and people of color in their mandate, Blank Forms also demonstrates that sites of innovation in the arts are not limited to New York City and Los Angeles.
Blank Forms doesn’t focus on any particular scene, school, or movement, save for those that blend rather than separate the arts and those that push and explore the boundaries and techniques of expression. I love the eclectic approach and the sense of artistic-historic continuity the artists represented by Blank Forms work within and expand. Highly recommended.
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May 13, 2023thanks eileen
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews