I pre-date my posts to this blog, because I want friends who read it to follow the narrative at least once.
That said, I know blog-savvy readers expect to cut to the chase and go to the most recent posting.
So I will leave this posting at the top of the page and add a 'latest post' tag to it, Clicking on that tag will jump over the 'backward' sequence of my narrative and go to the last item I've posted. It will also begin the 'normal' sequence for reading a blog, which is from the newest back in time to the earliest.
If you don't understand this you should just read the narrative and reread this notice the next time you return to my blog.
Blogged drains and anecdotes to you,
Melvino
I started this blog for several reasons...
(1) The most important was that I wanted to share the pictures I'd taken of artists who have played at CSPS during the fifteen years we've been producing concerts here.
(2) I recently lost three months of photos that hadn't been backed up in a computer crash, and this is a way to back up the photos off-site.
(3) I always say I'll email artists copies of the photos I take, but I never do. This way they can get them themselves.
And lastly, (4) this is an art project.
Carl Van Vechten (1880 - 1964) was a writer and photographer who was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
After graduating from Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, Carl couldn't wait to leave what he called "that unloved town" for the brighter lights of Chicago, where he studied music and pursued his fascination with the theater. He made a meager living and a minor reputation for himself with a newspaper column in William Randolf Hearst's Chicago American. His column, The Chaperone, was a blog-like report on what happened among the 'smart set'. Carl as 'the Chaperone', accompanied 'the Angel Child', an imaginary friend who made irreverent comments about the socialites. Angel Child gave Carl, ('Carlo' to his friends) a cover for his campy perspective on the goings on.
Carl later moved to New York City, where he wrote reviews of important theater, dance and music events. After extensive european travels, he became a novelist writing seven, semi-autobigraphical novels in a style not dissimilar from Truman Capote's. He was famous during the Roaring Twenties (a kind of domestic F. Scott Fitzgerald) and knew every literary and entertainment figure of the day. He was especially interested in the black artists of the Harlem Rennaisance and he was a friend and mentor to the artists of that movement. In 1930, he inherited several million bucks and gave up writing for photography, a craft he practiced for the next 35 years. His style was to photograph artists in head and shoulder shots against pieces of fabric or wallpaper, rather like the photobooth portraits that Andy Warhol made into paintings. (When the subject was a dancer Carlo often took full-length photos as well.) In 1945 , Van Vechten decided he was sufficiently 'practiced' to call himself a photographer, and he made three sets of his best photographs and gave them to the Beinecke Library at Yale, the Smithsonian Institution, and to Washington High School in his unloved hometown.
A hundred and ten years after Carl was born in Cedar Rapids, F. John Herbert and I moved here, and founded a contemporary art center at C.S.P.S., a hundred-year old Czech social hall. Like Carlo, I had an art career before getting into photography. And like Carlo, I waited fifteen years to publish my work.
My first photographs were taken with an Olympus Stylus camera, and the prints were developed commercially. I bought a Minolta digital (4 megapixel) camera about four years ago and have used it exclusively since then. I drop the photos into Photoshop Elements software and enhance them in 'Quick Fix' without much additional manipulation except for occassional cropping.
I take some photos without flash during the performances, but my camera isn't particularly capable of getting low light images. Nevertheless I think the live shots may have some interest. I even like the double exposures. I haven't included any of these shots, but I may insert some later, especially for the artists I didn't get a protrait of.
After their performance, I ask the artists to choose an artwork in the CSPS galleries to stand in front of for a portrait. Sometimes I use flash, sometimes I don't. I color correct if the color is too off.
As I said before, the main reason I take these photographs is to share them, so feel free to steal the jpegs. Artists may request larger tiff files. You're welcome to leave your comments, although I won't promise to reply, and I reserve the right to edit rude or nasty criticism.
Best flamingos to you,
Melvino
The Chaperone is a basically a library of photographs, that are arranged as in most blogs, from the most recent to the earliest.
The Vox software does not allow me to easily arrange older things as it automatically gives new additions the date of posting not the date of the photo. Although you can manually change the date of older items you are posting, in order to postdate a photo to December 2000 (for example), you have to click 72 times to bring the calendar back to that month and year.
I have placed photos taken before September 2002, in a collection titled, Early Snapshots. I chose that date because that is when I switched to a digital camera, and when I began taking proportionately more photos.
Note that the times listed are the time of day that I changed the date and not the time of day the photos were taken. I don't know how to change the time of day. Most photos were taken either during concerts or in the CSPS galleries a half hour or so after the concert.
Also note that because Vox limits the 'View My Tags' list to 100 tags, there are tags for performers that don't show up on the 'View My Tags' list. My photo of Ani DiFranco for instance isn't listed. You can do a tag search on her name and find her, but unless you know she played a concert at CSPS, you wouldn't look for it. So it's a good idea to browse the entire library and be surprised by what you find.
I don't expect to do a lot of postings about these artists, because my relationship to them is already clouded by personal and professional ties. (I don't want to make comments that would be seen as public relations or personal vendettas.) So I hope you will add comments to give viewers additional information about the artists or their CSPS performance.
Strings of pearls to you,
Melvino
I just added live performance photos to the blog. They are often double exposures or have shutter trails because I don't use flash and my camera doesn't take photos very well in low light.That said, I do what I can and sometimes I like the result. There is a kind of spiritual aura to some of these photos that wouldn't be the same in sharp focus.
Even though there are currently over 500 photographs on the blog, I didn't take photos of every performance of the last fifteen years at CSPS. During that time, we've presented over 1500 events and 190 exhibits. Often I don't have time to take a picture, or just forget to do it. I was able to date most of the photos because we have flyers, posters and programs for most events and a master list of every event we can remember. But the purpose of this blog is not to be a chronology of Legion Arts' presenting, it is to share some of the photos I took.
Spellings or the date information may need correcting, feel free to comment if a spelling is incorrect or a date looks questionable. Many artists have performed here several times, and I'm not always sure which performance I took the photo at. (I know I could be better at filing my photos, but please don't offer helpful suggestions that give me more work to do.)
If you have photos of artists at Legion Arts/CSPS events that you'd like me to have copies of, email them to me and I'll consider adding a collection of the photograps by others. I would also consider adding a link to your photos of CSPS events, but I'm not interested in linking to collections unrelated to CSPS at this time.
Snowballs to you,
Melvino
I added more photos today and started a new collection titled, Visual artists. Although I have taken documentary shots of every one of the almost two hundred exhibits we've shown at CSPS, I have very few portraits of the artists who made those exhibits. That's ironic because the visual artists are usually here longer than the performers are, and there are almost always receptions for them where it would be easy to get them to pose in front of their work. I'll make an New Years Resolution to do better by the visual artists from now on.
A thousand sea gulls to you,
Melvino
I love getting Christmas cards with photos on them or in them. They give lots of information about the people who send them, in addition to what the senders put into words. I hope the photos on this blog give you a huge, holiday bellyache of information about what we've been doing here for the last fifteen years. I'm having a problem uploading a complete list of my tags to this post. I cut and pasted an alphabetical list, but they weren't tags, so they didn't connect to the pictures. Then I pasted the same list into the tag port. It created tags, but it posted them in a random arrangement, not alphabetically. So, now if you find a name you're interested in on the alphabetical list, you either have to go to the tags at the bottom of this post, wade through the disorganized list until you find the name you want, click on the tag, wait for the search, and then on click on 'photos' on the 'View other items tagged' line to connect with the pictures... or, (it's easier, believe me) you can click on 'photos' at the top of The Chaperone main page, and use the 'Filter by photo tag' function to enter the name, and find the photos directly. Black Hole-idays to you, Melvino
aaron wilson, abinadi mesa, adrian legg, alan weber, alex wiesenfeld, alice peacock, alisdair fraser, alison corcetta, alistair moock, allan kellar, andre brunet, andrea loest, andrew bird, andrew calhoun, andrew hardin, andy stochansky, andy wilson, angela kariotis, angie toomsen, ani difranco, animal, anna egge, anne hills, antje dovekot, april verch, athol fugard, balfa toujours, barbara cohen, bastard sons of johnny cash, battlefield band, bert lams, beth amsel, beth custer ensemble, bill bowers, bill crawford, bill hart, bill mason, bill melton, bill morrissey, billy curmano, billy mclaughlin, bindlestiff family cirkus, bitch, bitch and animal, bo ramsey, bob eisen, bob hillman, bob otis, bohola, bonnie koloc, boubacar traore, bovey lee, black sheep, brave combo,bread and puppet, brenda noaker, brenda weiler, brett hartenbach, brian collier, brian joseph, brian torff, brian webb, buckwheat zydeco, california guitar trio, calvin spinka, campbell brothers, carl finch, carl van vechten, carmen robles izquierdo, carol montag, carol mullins, caroline shey, catie curtis, celtic fiddle fest, charles dennis, cheryl wheeler, cho, choying drolma, chris offit, chris smither, christian lemaitre, christine kane, christine lavin, chrys mitchell, cj chenier, cj yeh, clan destine, cliff eberhardt, connie kaldor, corita kent, cris williamson, cristina moura, crooked jades, crooked still, curtis whaley, cyd cassone, dag juhlin, dale todd, dan bern, dan moses schreier, dan rathje, dana kletter, danny hoch, danu, dar williams, darwin windall, dave carter, david chadima, david francey, david garman, dave moore, david jacobs-strain, david van allen, david wilcox, deb browne, deb talen, deborah auer, dee carstenson, dennis kucinich, dervish, dewane hughes, dirk powell, disappear fear, dj reborn, dominic suchyta, don conosenti, doug hall, doug marks, druha trava, drum drum, drunken boat, eddie from ohio, ed hamell, edie carey, eduardo de soigne, edward charney, effie cherry, eliza gilkyson, elizabeth zechel, ellis, ellis paul, ember swift, emergency music, equation, eric andersen, eric bibb, eric bogle, eric taylor, erin mckeown, esma redzapova, evalyn parry, fatmir ajeti, fernando lee, ferron, f. john herbert, fiamma fumana, flathead noodlers, flirtations, foghorn stringband, fragment, fred eaglesmith, fred jones, freedy johnston, frifot, fruit, garnet rogers, geoff mulduar, gerald guthrie, ginn sisters, girlyman, grady, graffiti theater, greg brown, greg greenway, goran ivanovic, gordon ligocki, gus barnett, guy davis, hamell on trial, harold eastman, heidi arneson, helen berggruen, helen stringfellow, hideyo moriya, high strung, holmes brothers, huun huur tu, imer ajeti, irene schroeder, iris dement, israel davis, ivan navarro, jack pavlik, jaime zevallos, jake armerding, james keelaghan, james thorne, jane gilmor, jane monheit, janis ian, jay knight, jay paul schafer, jeff byrd, jeff glassman, jeff lang, jeffrey foucault, jen chapin, jennifer monsoon, jess, jessie, jess klein, jim allen, jim jacobmeyer, jim kropa, jim lauderdale, jim neu, jimmy kean, jno cook, joan baez, jody heifner, jody hovland, joe wilson, john edwards, john gorka, john doyle, john frohnmeyer, john heck, john killacky, john manal castro, john schneider orchestra, john wesley harding, john zalenski, johnny, johnson school, jonathan seliger, jon langford, josh lewis, josh ritter, judith edelman, judy winter, julie martin, justin roth, karan casey, karan casey band, karen finley, karen kletter, karen savoca, karla bonoff, kat eggelston, kate campbell, kathe louise hostetter, kathryn hagy, kathy donnelly, katryna nields, keith knight, keith nelson, kel keller, kelly joe phelps, kelly pardekooper, kennedys, kenny white, kevin burke, kevin staling, kinsey sicks, kiran ahluwalia, kletters, kris delmhorst, kwaku ofori-yirenkyi, kyon k. chon, lance edwards, lanky, lars boyle, laura fuentes y calicanto, laura love, laurie haag, laurie lewis, les deal, les yeux noirs, leslie bostrom, leslie charipar, leslie roberts, linda dorman, lisa fay, lisa schlesinger, lisa schreihart, liz carroll, lloyd dunn, lloyd maines, los gauchos de roldan, lucy kaplansky, luis sandoval, luther wright, lynette richards, maceo (chapin,) mad river band, maestro subgum and the whole, maggie roche, maggie rochelle, mammals, mamou playboys, mara mccann, margot wagner, marianne bern, mariano marquez, marilyn arsem, mark anderson, mark erelli, mark hunter, mark stuart, marla, martin velisek, marty pottenger, mary gauthier, mary lou lord, mat moran, melissa ferrick, melissa weinman, meena natarajan, melvino, metro high school, michael fracasso, michelle acuff, mike and amy finders, mike richards, mikel rouse, mille guldbeck, milton pagan, mirta tocci, mollys, mrs. fun, myshkin, myshkin’s ruby warblers, nadia calmet, natalia zukerman, natalie haas, natalie macmaster, natalie van doxell, ned massey, nerissa nields, neva sills, new horizons ensemble, new millennium mod squad, niamh parsons, nields, nina gerber, nina swanson, nora o’connor, odetta, old blind dogs, old time tidal wave, olive fitzgerald, omstrab, osada, otis taylor, pamela z, pan xing lei, paperboys, pat broaders, pat edwards, pat shey, patrick ball, patrick huddleson, patrick scully, patty larkin, paul richards, peggy seeger, pete heitzman, pete rose, peter bufano, peter dimuro, peter mulvey, peter ostroushko, peter thompson, phil heywood, pierce pettis, pierre bensusan, pieta brown, popsy dixon, present music, push push theater, quetzal, quire, rachael davis, radoslav lorkovic, randy sabien, rd peterson, redbird, red hot louisanna band, red ribbon ball, reggie harris, rich toomsen, richard shindell, richard wood, richie havens, riley baugus, rizwan-muzzam, robert karimi, robert kocher, robert lipnick, roberto arguedas, roches, ron adkins, rosario goyeneche, rose polenzani, roy hamlin, rude mechanicals, ruth fox, ruthie foster, sabine golz, sally timms, sam pacetti, sam shaber, sandra menefee taylor, sara fitzgerald, sara harris, sara mast, sara todd, sarah di donato, savage aural hotbed, scott humeston, sean cleland, shannon hauerwas, shawn mullins, shefki ajeti, shenandoah shakespeare, sherman holmes, shooglenifty, sibikwa players, skott freedman, slaid cleaves, slavic soul party, small potatoes, sonia, sonia ruten, spencer day, stacey earle, stanley wrobel, stella chiwesa, stella gott, stephan fearing, stephanie merrick, stephanie monseu, stephan smith, steppin' in it, steve forbert, steve riley, steve tibbetts, storyhill, strawbs, suresh basnet, susan millar, susana baca, susan powter, susan shore, susan werner, suzanna mallow, suzzy roche, syndee goldstein, tama, tangerine trousers, tanglefoot, tanya savory, tape-beatles, target audience, tarika, teada, teatro del milenio, tectonic industries, terri hendrix, terry irons, terry karson, terry rathje, that 1 guy, thomas c. jackson, thomas hart benton, tilly woodward, tim erikson, tim fay, tin hat trio, tin hat quartet, tish hinojosa, tlen-huicani, todd colby, todd ristau, todd severson, tom aprile, tom paxton, tom prasada-rao, tom robinson, tom rosem, tom russell, tom torluemke, tom vilsack, tom woodruff, tony plaut, tracy grammer, tret fure, trever nicholas, tribute, turning the wheel, t. valada viars, tyler micoleau, uncle earl, uz jsme doma, vance gilbert, vicky grube, violet island, vivian heywood, voices on the verge, wailin’ jennys, wapsipinicon, w. david hancock, weepies, wendell holmes, wendy deal, will power, willy porter, wolfstone, wrongs, xavier tavera, xena fitzgerald, yerba buena, yungchen lhamo, zrazy,
I added a series of portraits to the blog today that were taken by Philip Carlton.
They were taken at the opening for an exhibition of the photographs of David Van Allen, a friend who has taken many photos of Drawing Legion productions over the years. David's show was called Portraits From New Bohemia.
Each work was actually a composite of 72 shots taken during a single session. The black and white photos were of many details following the main contours of his subjects without changing focus. Once the photographs were taken, David developed them as contact prints (35mm), cut out the individual frames and taped them together in overlapping, irregularly shaped montages. When he was satisfied with the result, he printed the photos in a larger size and instead of layering them, cut away the overlaps and fitted them together into a mosaic.
At the opening reception, I gave Philip my camera and asked him to take pictures of David's subjects with their portraits.
David's subjects for the photos were individuals who are helping to define this area, we call New Bohemia, a neglected part of this unloved town dotted with brownfield sites, and anachronistic landlords.
New Bohemia was once a lively center of Czech and Slovak culture, anchored by two giant social halls, CSPS and ZCBJ. A hundred and fifteen years later, CSPS and Third Street Live! are still the mainstays of an arts and entertainment district on 3rd street SE. Today the culture of the area is very diverse and includes immigrants from Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Chicago and New Orleans. There is a sizable contingent of artists, designers, musicians, performers and inventors.
Across the river, a two-block "Czech Village" is home to the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library, a Czech bakery, a Czech meat market, a Czech restaurant. two or three Czech bars, souvenier and gift shops,
The two areas are linked in the city's imagination, and by the state's designation, but the nature of the overall area is closer to a bohemia than to a "Czech Village". New Bohemia boasts an African American Museum, one of the largest solar arrays in the state, and ambient music events in a soywax candle shop/cum Peace center.
Even on the right bank, the Czech businesses alternate with a detective agency, a tattoo parlor, hair salons, an appliance store, a Salvation Army second-hand store, antique shops, a saddle shop, burger bars and a store selling wall-to-wall carpeting and fine wine.
David lives in the Cherry Building, a renovated factory housing new media production studios, a Christian poster printer, an aromatherapy salon, Eco-lips organic lip balm and a gallery of Asian pastery dough miniatures. CSPS has hosted artists from six continents, and work by artists from 175 countries across the spectrum of new media.
I've taken this long side trip because something is happening here that neither the rear-view mirror Czech desendants nor the country club corporates have a hand in, or a handle on. But David has managed to connect faces to it. A grass root collision of banker bikers and eco-entreprenurs.
What's that sound?
Melvino
Today, 4/21/08, I added a new collections of photos of performers and artists at CSPS this 07/08 season.
I added some photos to the blog yesterday. They cover the 2006/07 season just ended. An unfortunate computer crash last fall wiped out a bunch of photos that hadn't been backed up, including all my photos from the September Fifteenth (sic) Anniversary season line-up of 30 events in 30 days. I'm going to include the tags for these photos in the complete tag list. Beth Z from our board had just gotten a new camera last fall and she came to lots of events so maybe she can fill in some of that period with her shots. I really didn't take very many photos during the last few weeks of the season either, as I am losing enthusiam for the role of chief documentarian. We'd better come up with another solution for next year. I'm subtracting that role from my job description.
Caio Bambinot Noir,
Melvino
Thanks Lisa, Susan has been here at CSPS a dozen times and is always a funny and generous artist. She's... read more
on Susan Werner