Ones to watch

"If you are threatened by something. allow it. . . . If you have been hurt by someone allow yourself to feel it . . . let it go . . . now feel yourself more empowered as the hurt dissipates. . . ."

So goes a passage from Corey McCorkle's 1995 video installation. Another Inner Workout - McCorkle's retooling of Shirley MacLaine's 1988 video Inner Workout. McCorkle's work is made with such precision and austerity that it transforms MacLaine's pseudo seminar into an elegant minimalist statement. McCorkle revisits New Age notions of transcendence and healing and makes us reconsider whether or not they got their fair share of respect the first time around. Like some divine creative director hell-bent on rescuing a fallen flock. McCorkle seems to shout. "Take Two! This time, with less feeling and more focus!"

McCorkle, born just after the Summer of Love, in 1969, had a suburban childhood that was colored by his mother's experimentation with New Age practices. Much of what he witnessed was, by his own account, comical, yet McCorkle's work doesn't strike a cynical note. Rather, like the boy in E.T., McCorkle acts as an aide, assisting others on their journey. Much of McCorkle's work has an element of offering assistance. Take, for instance, his sculpture For Greater Velocity Towards Grace (1996), pictured below. The sculpture, which looks like modernist angel's wings, is actually intended to be a device to hold the user in the lotus position. It is made with meticulous attention to craftsmanship and detail (perfection as nirvana?). Of it, McCorkle says, "It threatens to function," but he does not expect the viewer to use the piece (though McCorkle can, and does), nor does he pretend that our viewing it will provide us with a transcendent experience. But what it could do is make us think again about the possibility of pursuing one.

It is refreshing to find a young artist who has such respect for his past, and it is that nobility that makes him so worthy of our interest.

Costume Drama

During a stint as the design editor for The New York Times Magazine, Jody Shields always attempted to insert a narrative into her layouts. "I once dressed the architect of a country house we were shooting in a deer costume and had him peeking into the pictures," she remembers. "New Jersey was having a major wildlife problem at the time. Needless to say, those pictures were never used."

Fortunately for us, Shields has found a new platform for her narrative compulsions. In 1992, while doing microfilm research on a story for Vogue, a 1940 headline from The New York Times caught Shields's attention: GUN GALS GET LIFE. Shields was captivated by how the accompanying photo focused on the way the "gals" dressed. "Back then, a newspaper would often describe subjects' clothes in a veiled attempt to pronounce judgment on them," says 'Shields, the author of two books on the history of fashion, "Fashion was often used as a way to get readers reading between the lines - in this case, the subjects' sexuality." Then and there, Shields decided the account would make a great basis for a movie. So, never having written a screenplay before, she did what any good reporter would do: She got a book on how to draft one. It took her six months to complete Bunny & Chippie, which has landed with the Australia-based PRO FilmWorks. The company is anticipating spending $4 million to $6 million to make the feature.

How did Shields's varied experience as an editor for The New York Times Magazine, Details, Vogue, and House & Garden help her in the screenwriting process? "As an editor, you get used to hearing other people's opinions," she says. "You get used to writing very fast, and not being terrified by deadlines."

Shields has just completed a second script, which she describes as "a cross between The Madness of King George and Fatal Attraction," and is working on a third. She's also finished a novel set in the eighteenth century.

Fan Fair

In 1993, while working in the photo department of Vanity Fair magazine, fledgling actress Sunny Chae caught the eye of legendary German photographer Helmut Newton. "He told me I had the face of a warrior," says Chae, who also has Newton-trademark curves. "He said, 'If Genghis Khan had a daughter, she'd look just like you.'" There followed a series of photographs based on that notion, taken in Monte Carlo. "I was so thrilled," she says. "I've always been his biggest fan." Chae seems to have a talent for attracting the attention of her idols. For her first role in a major motion picture, Woody Allen cast her in his next film as an "exotic call girl."

At Vanity Fair, Chae has, for the past five years, played another role, helping to produce the kinds of photographs Hollywood considers crucial in the star-building process. "The magazine is an amazing training ground," she says. "It's given me great confidence in myself, and experience in dealing with big personalities - but I keep the two roles very separate. The magazine may have taught me how to handle acting like a business, but I act because it is art and it is part of me." Chae also appears in singer Brian Kelly's music video, "She's Dancing," from the soundtrack to the film Basquiat.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group