Saturday, October 5, 2019

There is phrasing – a notion – that’s become a mantra to You and Me on a Sunny Day. When I’m speaking about the show to others, I inevitably offer “it’s entirely uncommon, in all ways.” Let’s begin with the plausibility that a young artist/art student befriends an eccentric senior living in his apartment building. That life stories, dreams, and secrets would be shared, that would inspire and influence something larger than the two of them. That she – willingly and ultimately – becomes his muse and the “star” in a five-year-project resulting in hundreds of compelling images. That those images would be captured in large-format film, composited, and fabricated into museum-quality exhibitions. That this project could and would become something timeless in the fragility of life and the ultimatum of death.

You can understand my compulsion to keep saying just how uncommon, and remarkable, Rocky and Gilda’s project really is. I think the viewers know it too, they see Mille and Jack, they feel it... first in scale, thrust into a sequence, then engulfed with vibrant color manifested in story and captured in the technical choices. We land inside, we see our grandparents, a souvenir from a family vacation, snapshots and accolades, we read our horoscope or curl up with a good book, fruitful lush rewards and unnourished decay on the vine, the rituals of life with and without someone, and this picture is a gift that is a love story. And for that, I want to say “thank you.”

Please join me in welcoming an artist has a lot to share and a whole lot to answer for, Rocky McCorkle!

William Wilson, Cultural Arts Manager
Grand Theatre Center for the Arts