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Breeding ground
Boston’s a fertile city for launching a creative career. Just ask one of these artists.

BY NINA WILLDORF


YOU SEE THEM around occasionally — madly scribbling notes in the local pub, chain smoking in front of what looks to be a studio. They’re Boston’s young artists on the make: trying, failing, and picking themselves up again.

From poet Sylvia Plath to chef Julia Child, visual artist Ellen Gallagher, and jazz pianist Danilo Perez, Boston boasts a legacy of artists from all mediums who were hosted, cultivated, and inspired by our fair city.

Some come to study at one of the area’s many colleges and universities, then decide to stay on; others use Boston as a layover between hometown and ultimate destination; still others are Boston-born and bred. But whatever their geographic trajectory, tomorrow’s artists must contend with today’s inhospitable cost of living in order to showcase their wares, play their tunes, and screen their films.

"Boston is small, but rich," explains Roland Smart, a visual artist who graduated from Tufts University and stayed. "It’s not quite as intimidating as New York," adds jeweler Jane Ko, who’s here doing graduate work at Harvard. And filmmaker Ellie Lee, a product of the Boston Public Schools, finds the town "psychologically comfortable," a place where she has friends who can help scout locations, loan her equipment, and fill up screening rooms.

But the process of making it can be far from comfortable. In tattered sweaters, with bags under their eyes, awash in frightening credit-card bills, a few of tomorrow’s Plaths, Childs, and Gallaghers talked with the Phoenix about the nitty-gritty: their cost-saving measures, grant-getting techniques, and worst mistakes to date. Just don’t call them aspiring — they’ve already received a host of critical accolades.

The musician

Matt Steckler bounds into the 1369 Coffeehouse in Cambridge’s Inman Square, a padded saxophone case slung over his shoulder, after a full day of teaching music down the street at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. Sleep is the first thing to go, says the 27-year-old leader of Dead Cat Bounce (this year’s best local jazz group in the Phoenix’s Best Music Poll). There’s a CD to promote, a tour to arrange, gigs to hype, and — somewhere in the middle of all that — composing to do.

Steckler, who graduated from Wesleyan University in 1997, came to Boston to get his master’s in jazz performance at New England Conservatory, which he completed in 1999. While there, he assembled Dead Cat Bounce, which, in various incarnations, have made the rounds of the Boston avant-garde jazz circuit for the past two years, to mounting critical acclaim. "Let’s see," Steckler says, "we’ve played Ryles, Regattabar, Middle East, Green Street, Good Life, House of Blues, Chopping Block — that was our first gig — and the Lizard Lounge." And as part of an upcoming mini-tour, they’ll play the Knitting Factory in New York. But with all this work, Steckler must support himself by teaching; the band’s gigs pay as little as $100 a night: "Gas money," he says. Their biggest gig yet, for a fee of $2500, will be this year’s First Night celebration in Boston on December 31.

In addition to assembling creative compositions for the six-person band, Steckler has plunged headfirst into the unsexy business side of band-leading. Most days after school lets out, he races through the hour’s drive home to Salem to make all the business-related phone calls he can before the workday ends at five.

Despite his devotion, things don’t always go according to plan. When producing the band’s first CD, Lucky by Association, Steckler didn’t think to put a bar code on the disc’s jacket. "So I couldn’t sell in retail," he explains ruefully. With the band’s recent album, September’s Legends of the Nar, Steckler was on top of the bar-code situation, but he’s still figuring out the kinks of working with PhotoShop, printing up spine labels for CDs, and running around dropping off stacks of discs for consignment sale at HMV, Tower, and Stereo Jacks. "I’ve sacrificed financial stability, sleep, senility — I feel rush, rush all the time," he says.

Pop hopefuls aspire to sign with a major label, see their video on MTV, and have a single ascend the Billboard charts. On the jazz circuit, however, the stakes are far different. Steckler says Boston’s been a good place to go to school and start out — "learn the ropes" — but he hopes ultimately to go to New York, to see if he can "make the grade." "Best-case scenario?" he says. "Getting signed by a label with a decent distributor who’s making sure the record gets heard, played on college stations. I think I will find a way to keep doing it, even if I have to save up and put out all of my own albums."

The jeweler

After a full day tending to mice in a Harvard lab, neurology PhD student Jane Ko comes home to hit the books: Vogue, British Vogue, Nylon. The 26-year-old Taiwan native is picking up tips, looks, and style cues for her growing business: making jewelry for a line called Nervenkitt. "My typical day is pretty crazy," Ko admits. "On a night when I’m inspired, I’ll jewel like crazy until 4 a.m. And then I’ll be at the lab by 10 a.m. Sometimes I go without much sleep."

Ko came to jewelry-making accidentally, without training, and with immediate success. A year into graduate school in Boston, she picked up some supplies at Beadworks to get crafty. "I wanted to have nice jewelry myself," she says simply. "I wanted something in between Claire’s and high-end that I couldn’t afford."

One day, a saleswoman in the shoe department at Saks inquired about a necklace she was wearing. Upon request, Ko returned a few days later with some of her creations, and — bam! — she got her first sale. "I thought, ‘I can do this,’ " she marvels. So Ko got a business license and started creating jewelry designs, which she sells through a slick, self-designed Web site (www.nervenkitt.com). She says she typically sells five or six items a month to loyal customers across the country, and another five or six to friends and family. It’s small potatoes, but Ko’s plate is full with crafting, designing, and bookkeeping — all after hours.

Ko’s jewelry synthesizes dainty and punk, delicate and hard-edge. She uses leather, chain mail with oddly shaped links, and colorful, chunky beads. None of her jewelry, she happily declares, is expensive: prices range from around $30 to $200. Yet so far, Ko’s gone thousands of dollars out of pocket, living off a meager graduate-student stipend and racking up charges on her credit card; a bill sits ominously on her crafting table. "Other than living expenses, everything’s going into the jewelry right now," Ko says, explaining that she hopes to sell her stuff around Boston in boutiques such as Wish, Jasmine Sola, or Louis Boston. Ultimately she’d like to work for a jewelry designer like H. Stern in New York.

Five years into her PhD, Ko estimates she has another year to go, and she’s bracing for the fast approaching decision she’ll have to make between neurology and Nervenkitt. She recently received a phone call from a freelance fashion editor at People magazine, who asked to see samples for a possible story. "I never thought it would go as far as it has," Ko says. "I’m keeping my fingers crossed."

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Issue Date: November 22 - 29, 2001

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