10 27 09 Updates

Tom and I met with Margaret Chin and Jason Mango at Taggert Elementary to discuss the possibility of joining forces and working part of the Journeys South project into the curriculum. We also toured the school and met with various persons including Mr. Riffel, the art teacher there. He had done a lot of research at HSP and was pretty sure he remembered seeing me around the reading room. All around, everyone was quite enthusiastic. At this point, Tom and I, in concert with the advisory board need to come up with a proposal that we will shoot back to them and see if it's do-able.

We did more roaming of the neighborhood including the big Vietnamese (?) supermarket at 3rd and Oregon behind the Oregon Diner. As an aside, the prices were extremely low, beautiful produce (though not organic) and all kinds of spices and teas (which I intend to sample).

We then had lunch at a place oddly named "Happy Clams," a Cambodian restaurant right on 7th by Snyder Ave. We were the only ones in the place, were made extremely welcome, and we got to talk with one of the owners who is an artist named Phat Long. He has a workshop right in back of the restaurant, works at CRC, an industrial chemicals plant, in Warminster four days a week for ten hours each day and runs the restaurant Friday-Sunday. The restaurant has a lot of sculptures and reliefs from the Reamker (Ramayana) that he did.

(For $6 I got a big plate of big flat rice noodles and some kind of green vegetable that was perhaps Chinese broccoli all topped off with a delicious sauce. There were additional hot sauces on the table. Very satisfying although it was clear that this vegan request was unusual. The whole menu is either meat or seafood.)

A return visit is definitely in order to talk to Phat and see if perhaps I can photograph some of the sculpture to incorporate into the project and also to talk more about his experiences of immigration and the neighborhood.

Tom and I then proceeded to Stiffel to discuss doing oral histories and we plan to videotape them on Nov. 12th and 13th. I may use some of the videotape in my project at least to inform what I do. I also asked Susan Hoffman to move the shooting at Stiffel to January since I suspect that any shoot I do will end up being THE shoot and I want to have time to prepare.

Today, the 29th, I brought the Pecha-Kucha style slide show that I made for First Person Arts to Stiffel. I was actually able to read my notes since the room wasn't pitch black and it went very well. I was more practiced and I think the group of eighteen or so seniors really enjoyed my patter. I'm hoping to create at least a little bit of a buzz so that by the time I shoot people have an inkling as to what Mural Arts, the project, and me are about.

Next week I plan to do some some photography on the streets of the neighborhood, possibly with the the Graflex, but more likely with my old Rollei that makes a pretty high-resolution image on 120 film. I want to get some images before the weather gets too cold.

Lastly, I am starting to get some ideas for how I want to assemble the final project, but I'm still keeping flexible and my cards close!

10 13 09 More Updates.

The reverse-processed slide worked quite well. I fetched Boris from Langhorne on Sunday and then brought him to the Arts Bank on Monday for a tech. The slide is very vivid, but a bit dark. It's clear the projector needs some technical upgrades and the slides need to be made a bit less dense, but these are all reasonably easy. If I'm to project outside and really large, I'll need to fabricate a new projector. Boris is beautiful, but not efficient enough in my estimation for really huge projections.

I have tentatively set three dates with Stieffel. One to show slides and discuss my work and two to shoot. The dates are:

Work discussion/side show: Thursday Oct. 29th at 1-2pm. I'm still hoping to get someone who wants to present work back-to-back with me, but I'm not banking on it and am pretty sure I can talk for an hour.

I have two dates for vintage portrait shoots with the persons who visit the center. They are:
Friday, Nov. 13th and 20th from 9:30 to 2:30. I hope to shoot about thirty portraits each day.

I love the idea of bringing something forth as a way of connecting and I think this will be a great way to feel things out in terms of creative participation and my own way of working.

Additionally, I met today with Kathy McFadden an artist who lives on the 2400 block of Darien and she gave me some insights, nothing I'd consider earth-shaking, but I feel like each piece of the landscape I accumulate brings me closer to some synthesis.

10 09 09 We have the first glass mounted 3.25" x 4" slide.

"Footage at 11!"

10 06 09 A Few Details Worth Noting.

I have contacted Susan Hoffman at Stiffel about bringing a slide show there and talking about my work. I have also suggested doing a free community portrait shoot near the December holidays.

I'm meeting with K.A. McFadden, an artist in the "Stiffel neighborhood" next Tuesday.

My friend Sandy Lehan who does house histories is going to research the chain of title for a number of locations in the neighborhood that appear to have been occupied by Jewish immigrants. These will likely include 115 S. 6th, Philadelphia, Pa. Cong. Talmud. Torah Adath Jeshurun, N. E. cor. 6th and Cantrell, which is now an African-American church. I identified it by the Yiddish above the door and then found the details on Google. Also 2118 S. 7th which appears to have been a Jewish-owned business. I suspect these "handings-off"of stewardship may play a role in developing the final project.

10 06 09 Slides and Diapositives!

I just got back the second batch of digital images converted to 35mm glass mounted slides. They look amazing! I always suspected the images I was making would look cool big and they do! I also got back the first direct from a digital file, reversal-processed image on 4x5 black and white stock that will go in "Boris" as a test image. It too looks really fine. So, I may have a methodology for producing these lantern plates. The diapositive (image on transparent stock) is a true silver matrix on a heavy polyethylene base. These have already proven extremely hardy and are estimated to have a shelf life of 200 years under cool and dry conditions. Sweet. The glass slides are pricey, but not expensive--about $32 each to make. This is not so terrible considering what inkjet printing and framing costs. I can even make bigger ones should I chose to.

Call me a Luddite, but I like the idea of making a simple black and white image that is a stable physical artifact. I really have my doubts about the durability of even gold CD's and files squirreled away on servers or hard-drives. An lantern slide can sit in the bottom of a trunk for a hundred years and then be taken out and "read" or even be re-digitized and remade.

10/05/09 Forays into the Neighbourhood

This week and last, Tom Carroll and I visited the Stiffel Center, first to meet with Susan Hoffman, and then to introduce ourselves, talk with people, and start to get a sense of the area. We also did a lot of walking around, talking, and looking making visits to various sites such as the "Little Shul" on Emily Street, the converted shul that is now a Cambodian temple, as well as visiting with people who run an after-school program in the neighborhood for local kids. I hope to make it to an art session they are doing on Oct. 20th.

I will be back in the area next Tuesday to meet with a local artist and talk about community connections. I hope to bring a slide show of my work to the Stiffel residents in the next few weeks. I'm also lining up meetings with Rakhmiel Peltz and Harvey Finkle. Thinking about possibly a public shoot in the neighborhood even before the actual art creation starts as a kind of ice-breaker and way of feeling things out; possibly doing it as part of the help-portrait project which does free portraiture around the December holidays.

Also, Tom and I found some "marker points" that I hope to investigate with the help of a friend who does house histories...places that once were occupied by Jews but are now Southeast Asian or African American. There is a place at 2118 S. 7th that was a gold and lapidary supply house called "Shapiro's." Also we found a Church at 6th and Cantrell, near Snyder that had much Yiddish/Hebrew writing. I could make out: "Toyre Tamud (unreadable) Eshrun." This appears to have been a religious school. It's now an African-American storefront church. We also walked to Dickinson Square to see where merchants from Seventh Street used to live. Lots of Pompeian brick houses whose interiors I'm sure have rich wood and pocket doors, but are otherwise fairly modest.