2025 Year in Review
Tony Orrico & Christopher-Rasheem McMillan for Headmaster No. 10
Headmaster
The print edition of Headmaster is no more – stock up while you can! – but we did have a successful run at a couple of art book fairs this year. We enjoyed the new Multiple Formats fair at Boston University this spring, and in the fall we had a blast at the Pittsburgh Art Book Fair, held in the fancy sculpture hall of the Carnegie Museum of Art. I don’t think we’re totally done with print publishing yet, and I may have a couple of smaller ideas percolating that I hope can see the light one day.
Scandalous Conduct: A Fairy Extravaganza
This June we brought our video installation Scandalous Conduct: A Fairy Extravaganza to Provincetown, where we christened Stanley, a new gallery space run by the long-standing organization Twenty Summers. I will never say no to two weeks on the Outer Cape, particularly in June if they overlap with the Provincetown International Film Festival. I can now say with certainty that John Waters watched something I made, and that he lasted a whole seven minutes before walking out, which insider townies told us means that he must have really liked it.
In October we took part in the Circa: Queer Histories festival out of Los Angeles, giving a virtual talk (from Providence) about the 1919 Newport Sex Scandal and the making of Scandalous Conduct.
Writing
Another highlight of the year February was spending nine days at the Wedding Cake House. Why bother doing a writers’ residency within walking distance of your own home? Fair question! It gave a chance to extract myself from the logistical nightmare of my day-to-day life last winter to live in a feminist art mansion and work on a novel, editing furiously from the desk in the little tower and snacking more or less constantly. It was great to meet five new-to-me writers and also Larry Krone, whose work I have known about since 2009 and who I have been fortunate to meet a couple of times over the last decade. On top of the writing and editing, everyone took turns making dinner for one another. (I made one of my standards, the Hayley Mills Lentil Loaf from Murder She Cooked.)
Look for the novel some time around 2095.
I did two readings in Providence this year, something I haven’t done in forever, and both times I ended up reading very old pieces. On Valentine’s Day I took part in a readings plus jazz event at Riffraff, where I read my piece from the 2010 (!) anthology Coming and Crying: Real Stories About Sex from the Other Side of the Bed. Then in the fall I got invited to read at Lost Bag, where I read random selections from my 2013 (!!) chapbook Coworkers I Have Had. (Belated note to self: the story about not knowing how to pronounce Autechre doesn’t really work out loud.)
I also did one other Riffraff event, being the interlocutor – or, as store owner Lucas Mann prefers, “the In Conversation With guy” – for an event with Paul Lisicky to promote his book Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell. This was very exciting because I was supposed to do an event with Paul in April 2020 that never happened, so it felt many years in the making.
More Writing
I’ve been writing weekly features for Beacon Media, a local suburban newspaper group that includes the Cranston Herald, the weekly paper I grew up reading. I’ve largely been writing profiles of interesting people who live in the area. Some favorites this year, in no particular order, have included:
Chester Browning, a guy who has taken tens of thousands of photos of T.F. Green Airport
John Perrotta, a formerly coked out prison guard with rage issues and a gambling addiction who reinvented himself through standup
Phil Vincent, a one-man metal band who promotes his music exclusively through billboards5
Marion Orr, author of a book about a groundbreaking but ultimately disgraced Congressman
Bernadette Conte, nonagenarian producer of a new documentary about the history of the Italian Catholic church I grew up attending
Client Work
On top of the passion projects, I’m now working 30+ hours a week on communications and marketing client projects. The Looking for Work phantom no longer haunts my every free moment. How exciting! One project did get DOGEd in April, and then unDOGEd over the summer, but for the most part things have gone fairly smoothly. The flexibility has also been nice with all of the family stuff that I’ve been dealing with this year.
Archives
But Matthew, you might be asking, what about that library degree you got a couple of years ago? Well, much like my undergrad anthropology major, it appears that the degree was less of a career leap than I expected. However! I did complete a personal archiving project for a family this year, and I have a couple of vague ideas about doing more of this down the road. If you have a small collection that you don’t know what to do with, I’m happy to talk!
The Ask
Despite being very busy, I’m always interested in consulting on projects, editorial work, personal archiving projects, curatorial opportunities, and opportunities to talk about homophobia in the Navy circa World War I or the state of niche queer art publishing.