it's been a while....

So, October was busy and crazy. We had the painting of the front of the building completed but the windows have not been replaced yet because of the cold temperatures. We did get the furnace installed on the first floor but not soon enough for an open house where we showed Chris' class' Rt 8 panoramas. For that day we lived with space heaters, garage lighting and unpainted walls. However the work was well received and two were sold.

Here's the front of the building now: In progress.

Now complete without the new doorway or window above:

Actually, the white above and below the big windows will be replaced with wooden ornaments to reference the ironwork. It means that the white glass that is always broken will be gone and the red and grey will continue the lines. The door will be replaced with an antique mahogany one that matches the building across the street. This 1950's aluminum one is not very nice. Our sign is planned for the long grey line just above the red columns. We have to get permission for that from the Historic Preservation Board. 

Today, Keith is there and hopefully the hvac folks are giving him some heat in his studio space and in the second floor. The heat pump is already sitting there outside on the Sutton Street side of the building with the AC unit for the first floor. Keith has been working extremely hard to make this place workable. He is very stressed but doing a fine job of patching the holes that let in cold air, rain and the elements. Without his hard work, sleepless nights, and standing the cold, this would not be possible. 

Life, luck and iron

So over the weekend, I got this great picture of our niece Danielle as she was about to go to her first homecoming in high school with a bunch of girl friends. This young woman is 14 and looks like a million dollars in her homecoming dress. Back in my day, you had to be asked by a boy to be able to go the homecoming and if you weren't asked, you just could not go. It was horrible when I think about it now. Girls were pretty repressed back then. It wasn't until the 1970s that we began to demand our rights and think differently. Society pretty much forced us into a model that would not work at all today and thank goodness for that. Danielle and her friends probably just had a fine time and enjoyed themselves with no thought about dates.

When the workers were cleaning off the ironwork on the front of our building to ready it to paint this week, they discovered that the detail in the iron was extraordinary but had been covered for probably 100+ years with layers and layers of paint. A few pieces are missing from these pictures but will be back on when the place gets its painting done. The interesting part is that the work was made by L. Schreiber and Sons from 521 & 523 Walnut Street in Cincinnati. That would be roughly at Walnut and 5th which is the corner of Fountain Square. The company was there from 1854 to 1887 when it moved to larger spaces on Eggleston Ave with access to the railway. Our bases have the early stamp of the company rather than the logo stamp found on later castings.

You can see in the images where there is paint still on the ornate parts that so much of the detail was covered up and we had no idea how really beautiful it was. I am so anxious to see it when they complete the paint removal and repaint it to show off its details. The background on the iron will be a very dark charcoal grey and the recessed area will be a color called stolen kiss, a beautiful rich dark red.

This building keeps getting better and better. The neighbor directly east of us removed the ironwork at some point in the years that followed its installation. The front on that building looks like the 1950s but the one just beyond has a similar ironwork front although not as much as ours since ours goes around a corner.

Our FotoFocus exhibitions continue to throw us curves. Chloe did not send the movie and I had to remind her to get it to me. She uploaded it and it took overnight to download it. I attempted to put the movie for Nick's show onto the mac mini that I brought home over the weekend. However, I could not do that because the thing would not recognize my bluetooth keyboard, and mouse and I did not have the password to open it up in the first place. So that foiled me and then David discovered we did not have the correct size poles to hang the show. We figured out an alternative method to replace the missing poles. However, the folks at Look3 continue to frustrate me. We did print a beautiful Sartore elephant print this morning for the back wall of his gallery. The show will look great but never do I want to do something like this again when the logistics are so complicated by snotty folks who think they are doing us a favor to cooperate.

thoughts on FotoFocus, staining, and my knee.

So, we are a few weeks into the semester and I had knee surgery because I could not make it without. No way could I walk that far, stand that long, and be paying attention to anything but my throbbing knee. So, I bit the bullet and it's just over a week later. I can walk again, no cane, no crutches and no walker but I forget to take it easy on the thing and every one in a while push a bit too hard. Like now, I am icing it because I just spent about a half hour leaning over the vanity I tried to stain and finish in a one coat process and it was a failure - a complete failure. So today I am using Stripeeze to rid the piece of the mess I applied yesterday. I should have stopped immediately after the first brushes, but thought my technique was the issue not the material.

I have stained and varnished all the doors and windows in this house and tons more things. But this MinWax Polyshades is the worst product on the market for refinishing or finishing for the first time. I followed the instructions to a T and it looked worse than if a 5 year old had been mucking about.
So, after stripping for a while, I must rest my knee with ice.

School is going ok. Classes are fine. Maybe better than fine. FotoFocus can be over soon enough for me. The banners are up around campus and look terrific. We got snubbed by Enquirer and FotoFocus for the article in last week's Sunday edition. That was disappointing but we have blitzed them with pictures, tweets, Facebook postings and I don't think they can miss that. I think we are going to have the jumbotron sign along 471 announce us so more folks will see that than the newspaper anyway. The ongoing issue is the uneasy relationship with the guy who runs Greaves. He is a bit of a prick, young and knows every so much more than anyone else. He makes snide comments about our use of another projector rather than their $40,000 one that is set to the wrong aspect ratio for the images and doesn't change easily. Anyway, that is a long story of a man peeing on all the bushes vs some one who wants to get things done well. I guess he is afraid that if he helps us do an event that looks spectacular, he will somehow look bad rather than be praised for a job so well done. Beats me. So little power, so little landscape and such a big fight. Academia.

Anyway, the shows should be wonderful, the work load is probably manageable if no one lets their head get too big and then lots will enjoy. I want to say, wow, wasn't that great. I have another nagging idea that the big FotoFocus folks think National Geographic photographers shows are not highbrow enough for the ART crowd from NYC, LA or themselves. My favorite photographers in the world do not work for Nat Geo, nor are those the books I collect, but and this is a big BUT, to do a show that will draw others to the galleries that would not normally set foot inside, to do transdisciplinary work that could be incorporated into curricula all over campus, you are not going to do a show of one of my favorites, won't happen. We are trying to be inclusive, not exclusive. We can teach about sustainability, world politics, global warming, other lands, other species and of course photography all in one place. That is what we chose to do. I only wish the main folks at FotoFocus could understand the shows and give us the credit we deserve because some folks have worked their asses off for over a year to have this happen. And one has given her energy and her wealth to support these efforts. I hate for her to be snubbed.

One hour til I begin teaching my last year.

41 is a big number for a teacher. University teaching is probably easier than elementary and high school. Some days are so long and it feels like you have not made a difference in their abilities to see, understand and grow; then others, you see the lightbulb go on and then you know soon they will not need you for guidance, only for challenging and brainstorming. The best thing that can happen as a university art professor is that your students don't need you any more. The big word is NEED. They continue to want to show you what they are doing and get your feed back but they do not NEED you to figure out where to go next. They have begun the long process of developing their own vision, their own work ethic and their own voice.

I know I helped a bunch of students do this along the way based on the number who are still working in some manner. It may not be what they started out to do, but their own travel down the path led them to other ways to say what they need to say. This is gratifying to see.

So, here I sit in my office with an embarrassing slide show of my life ready to show the students today to give them an idea who I am and what I have been up to all these years. I am anxious to see what they will do and to see if any lightbulbs are going on any time soon. 

August 18 11:30 AM

Last night in Maysville near sunset with banners in the windows and signs on the door telling the folks in Maysville, we are coming in late May.

Closed on the Maysville Building and now the work begins!

So, the show got delivered and is in safe keeping. The campus art committee is going to decide where they should be hung. It's going to be very special.

On another note, while waiting to close on the Maysville building, I spent part of the week cutting and assembling the mats for Joel Sartore's show in the Third Floor gallery. The prints look great in the mats and I even got the labels done.

I also made a website for FotoFocus for the Regional Student Show they are sponsoring. That was more work than it should have been if the committee there had their act together and gave me text, images, date and links on time. I know they are up to their eyeballs but I was flying by the seat of my pants and I could have just done the entire thing in a day or so and instead it took 2 weeks. But now it's done and up online and students can submit their work for the show.

So, we closed on the Maysville building yesterday and that was also more trouble than it should have been because the sellers were divorced and the ex-wife was still very very angry and unable to function in a reasonable manner most of the time. Everything needed to be brought to a battle and then when the fight was over and the blood cleaned up, a small decision was made. The poor realty agent and her closing lawyer got ears full as did the bank folks. Luckily she lives way far away in California and won't be in Maysville hopefully ever. We can go about our business like hard working reasonable people and get the place put back in order. The tenants left a bunch of shit over the years, some in the basement and some in the stairway and some in what used to be the joint garbage collection place. And when people move out of apartments, they do not clean their ovens, stoves, refrigerators, showers, sinks, toilets floors or cabinets. It's gross and while waiting the first Friday celebration that we are doing, we will begin to clean the personal gross leftovers in the bathrooms and kitchens. I cannot use them unless I disinfect them completely so I went to the store and bought a boatload of cleaners today. All are anti-bacterial because I was so grossed out.

I never considered myself a germ-a-phobic but there is something about someone's personal debris that gets to me. I bought gloves that are good enough for science experiments and brushes and sprays and scrapers.

So, tomorrow, Keith and I want to have a slide show in the front window during the gallery hop in case anyone actually comes way down there. We are showing a small group of images from India. We also have some left over banners from the Krohn's butterfly show that they made of our images a few years back. We also have some signage to put in the windows letting folks know what is happening in the space.

We ran into a former student of our department at the post office. Katrina lives in Maysville and was surprised to see us. She will be an enthusiastic supporter of our efforts in town. There are so many people who have been generous, warming and welcoming to us there. It feels great. We probably will spend time over at EAT with Lori and Simon tomorrow. They have been the best.

I will take and upload some images from tomorrow night soon.

Meanwhile the garden is producing like crazy and we are going to be in big trouble.....

That is all I know now.

FotoFocus show and banners arrive tomorrow.

Darlene is bringing the show and banners in the truck over to school tomorrow to unload. Today, the guy from Look3 is driving up from Charlottesville with it all loaded up. Keith, Matt, David and I will be there to get it up into the gallery. It's drizzling out now and I hope that clears up for tomorrow's unload.

Sartore exhibition image

I got the mat board also today over at Frame King and will begin to cut mats tomorrow afternoon. I have to do all of Joel Sartore's show. I know it will look wonderful because his prints are quite nice. Then Matt and I are going to print the big one for the show after school begins and not long before we have to hang it so it doesn't get dinged.

I will be so happy when it is all up and ready to be enjoyed. It's been such a long time coming and it will be up for only a month. I hope the campus receives it well. We have students working right now on research for the summer about the show to act as docents when school children come to see both shows. They are Kirsten Schwarz' students from Environmental Sciences and Biology. The photo students who are interested are going to meet with these women and explain the photographic significance of the work.

Tonight we shift gears and go to the unveiling of the first CSA portfolio from the Carnegie. That ought to be fun and I am anxious to see what the work looks like from the other artists. I will try to save up some money to buy the next one.

The building still is not ours. The closing might be this next week. Just waiting on the paperwork to make its way back to Maysville to transfer the ownership. Joyce and Tim looked at it last week when they stopped on their way back home. I think they liked it. I know when it is fixed up, they will. Lori from Eat has already created a group of people to actively create some interest in the First Fridays art hops. We will hang some signs in our windows to let anyone who goes by what is about to happen there. I am hoping to earn some money after retirement by creating websites and doing fine ink jet printing. We will have a bit of overhead to cover each month but it won't be too much. Still lots to do before we can open up after the purchase.

MRI on my knee on Thursday next week. That should tell the tale on the lingering pain. I really need my knee to be healthy for all that is coming up.

The garden continues to produce tons of veggies. We are eating healthy food these days.

Turned in my papers to retire from teaching

It will be 41 years teaching photography to undergraduate students when I smile and walk out the door in May. I turned in the paperwork yesterday to both Thom and the new dean Katherine and asked for Emeritus Status and to begin a search to replace me as soon as school begins in August.

I have no regrets, no hesitations and in fact, it makes me feel good to know I did a good job, gave my students my best and can continue to have a place in their lives as colleagues and friends as they go forward.

We are buying a building in Maysville in the historic downtown at the corner of 2nd and Sutton. It is an Italianate building from about 1860, three stories and across from EAT gallery. The building is in pretty good shape for its age, but we will do some work on it. There are two apartments upstairs and both need some updating and rearranging. The top floor has a view of the river which is two short blocks behind it to the north. The storefront will hold our photo gallery and our studios. While not big, it is the right size project for us and will be our retirement project giving us a new way to spend our time.

We have applied for a grant to fix the facade and above is the way we envision it looking. We will be finding out about the grant next week. It will give us a max of $5000 for the project. Prices in Maysville for work is reasonable compared to our local prices in the Cincinnati so that money will go a long way to replacing the single pane windows with double pane, repainting the facade and windows and the top. 

The inside looks like this right now in what will be the gallery space and my studio. Keith's will be behind me in another room. It has a beautiful tin ceiling which we will paint a dark grey matt surface. The walls will be a gallery white, the floors will be refinished. There will be moveable gallery walls down the center and dividing the space from my studio area. My plan is to have a 44" epson printer in my space with computers, my large photo library, print drawers and work tables. I hope to spend time working on my own images, making websites and printing fine art work for other photographers for exhibitions or portfolios. 

In the gallery, we will show the work of under represented or emerging photographers. While there might not be a huge financial incentive to open a gallery, for us, it will be a labor of love and service to the field. However, we do hope to sell the work we show to aid the photographers who loan us their work for our space. The gallery is going to be called 2See. 

The summer is moving very fast. I am really wanting it to slow down so I can savor this last summer  before my last year. 

Next week I have to begin to mat the work of Joel Sartore for the show in October and I begin physical therapy for my knee, get my car worked on and maybe begin to work with Anita Douthat to make her website. The following week, Joyce and Tim come, we close on the building, and we have the unveiling of the CSA portfolio at the Carnegie. I think the banners also arrive from Charlottesville by way of our kind Darlene Anderson, the sponsor for our Nat Geo show in Oct. 

Carnegie's Community Sourced Art Portfolio

This past spring, I agreed to be one of the artists chosen for inclusion in The Carnegie's first CSA portfolio. The idea is that the selected artists make pieces that will fit into a 11x17" box and collectors from the community purchase the portfolio sight unseen for a really reasonable $350 and get (in this case) 9 pieces of art. There are 50 portfolios in the offering so it's a really great way to get collectors who have never seen or never purchased your work to begin to grow their collection. This has been done in Minneapolis, Cincinnati and other arts conscious cities. I loved the idea and agreed to put work in the portfolio. The portfolio is curated by Carnegie's Matt Distel.

An artist can do 50 distinctly original pieces or one piece 50 times. I chose to do 2 pieces 25 times each and sign them as part of this portfolio. The date for delivery is July 1st,  I believe. I was going to post my pieces here but that would be a little premature. So come back in July to see what I offered in the portfolio.

I was asked if it was a bad deal for artists and replied NO since, it's an opportunity to have my work in 50 new collections with little effort on my part and I see it as a way to have people who might not know my work to become familiar with some of it. I was happy to be a part of this first portfolio and hope at another time to be a part of other ones.

Mine are all printed and delivered. I was anxious to get it done not knowing what this summer has in store for us.

Since I cannot show what I put in, I can show work from the same series that is not in the portfolio.

Here's what I have been working on....

Which group do you like more? The singles or the doubles with the added word and drawing?

Lost & Found Ellora Caves

Metta: Meenakshi Temple, Madurai

Metta: Varanasi Ghats

Hall of a thousand columns, Meenakshi Temple, Madurai

Pilgrims, Meenaskshi Temple, Madurai

Tourists, Taj Mahal

Silk Weaver, Varanasi

Been gone so long....

Blogging is not one of the things that comes first to my mind and it seems to have fallen off the radar for me for the past two years. Once school begins, it seems there are way too many other things that perk to the top of the critical list and blogging falls away.

However, this is my last summer before my last year of teaching. I will retire at the end of the next academic year having completed 41 years of teaching full time in higher ed. My first 18 were in Denver at Metropolitan State where I was the only full time photo person but shared my darkrooms with two other schools who also had photo teachers. The last 22 have been at Northern Kentucky University where I was chair, then back up to the faculty in photography.

As each school year ends, I usually fill the first few weeks with updating my class websites, thinking up new research assignments and thinking about what needs improving while I still remember. This summer, I did it differently, I quickly began working in the studio on re-editing work I had never used from travels abroad. The intense time in the studio refreshed me to open my head again.

The big question that my pal Barry Andersen and I discussed but came to no conclusion was: Are pictures from travels that don't clearly fit into a project ever more than travel pictures? Can they have a new life, can they become a new portfolio of images that can fit into your larger body of work? Whew, that's heavy and still unclear. My hope is that they will make some sense when you look full circle at one's career of imagemaking.

So, I have been out of school for just over a month now. Not all days are productive in the studio and some days I do other things. Today, we will have lunch with Melanie Spencer Warner and her husband then I will go to school for a software meeting. Melanie graduated around 2000 and has been a very successful journalist since then using her other degree for the writing and her photo degree for the images she includes. She also continues to make her personal work which is lovely and can be seen on her blog.