Vietnam Memorial and SAAM
Cris and I are in DC visiting Peter. He is amazing and is doing really well. We took the time for a quick visit to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. I can never get enough of it and I always come back to this part of the building which is near the Lunder Conservation Center. If any of you reading this are in the area and have never been here you really should make the effort. There is a great wood fired pizza place a couple of blocks away called The Matchbox. Get a small pizza and see some art!
Two of my friends from Meadville were killed in Viet Nam. Jim Rudd was a neighbor whom I knew quite well. We spent a lot of time together at the YMCA and I can remember his talking about his interest in Native American culture. He was a very sweet guy. He was a private in the Marines and died on 6 August, 1968.
I knew David Dragosavac less well, but Meadville was small and I am pretty sure we were on the Y swim team together at one point. David was a Sergeant in the Army and was killed on 1 April, 1970.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is really worth a visit. Very moving.
Utopia Parkway
I just got back from shooting a great dance piece by Angie Hauser and Chris Aiken who are new dance faculty members at Smith. Their piece “Utopia Parkway” is totally improvised, as is the live music that goes along with it (Jesse Manno and Robert Benford). It only runs tomorrow night and Friday at Smith (20+21 September). It is totally great and shouldn’t be missed. If you in the area, go see it.
Hadley Hall Projection Room
This is a bit of an experiment. When I was out at Willard recently, I shot the bowling alley in Hadley Hall and then went upstairs to the projection room. The lighting was the weirdest I have come across. I shoot most of this stuff in RAW, so that I have tons of latitude when it comes to editing the photos. I messed around with these images for a long time and I could NOT get the color to look good. The walls were yellowish and there were mixed fluorescents. Rather than get discouraged and stuff the whole idea of a post I decided to convert to black and white and see how they look online. Funny, since in the days of film I used to shoot this sort of thing in black and white much of the time.
The tradition for the projectionists was to write the name of the film and the date it was shown on the walls.
Lots of interesting films here. For example, “All Fall Down” was shown on 13 January, 1963, and Apache Rifles got a (Good) rating.
And here “The Glass Slipper” was shown on 14 April, 1956. And these were all 35mm prints!
What really interests me about the asylum having shown first run movies is that the residents of the institution were able to attend, as were the people who lived in the surrounding towns. From what I have been told, the townsfolk sat in the balcony and the asylum residents sat downstairs.
I like these notes for the projectionist. There must have been someone downstairs who could send some sort of signal in case of a problem.
The projection room seemed to me to be almost totally intact. The sheet of paper here might be hard to read online, but at the top of the list is “Back To The Future”.
Here’s another of the projection lenses. A beautifully made optic.
There was still quite a bit of paperwork lying around.
I was just blown away by this room and its contents.
It is really hard to put into words just how fortunate I am to get into places like this, and how important it is to me to be able to preserve images of something that very few people can see for themselves.
So, thank you all for checking in and encouraging me to do this kind of work. I am off to Rotterdam tomorrow to shoot more suitcases and will post an update to that project very soon.
Safety Pins
This afternoon I took publicity photos for Paint Box Theatre’s production of “The Ugly Duckling”. When I got there I noticed the costumer had these safety pins on her jeans. Very functional and also cool looking.
Giulio Cesare
I had some work at Princeton yesterday and as I was shooting some panoramas in the fine arts building I saw this guy sitting alone on a table in a hallway. He is about only 3 inches tall and still looked like he had total control of his realm. I wonder if this is what Caesar really looked like. He has a very commanding presence.
Waterloo, NY
Waterloo, NY is an interesting little town. It is not too far from Willard and I have passed through it a lot since it lies on one of the main routes between the Thruway and Ithaca. There was a Masonic Lodge on this corner (Virginia and Williams Streets) which was torn down in 2007. When that building came down, this sign became visible again.
I walked up to the brick to get a closer look and it is in very good condition. It is a complete shame that the Masonic building had to be razed, but at least something interesting came out of its destruction.
Albert Bierstadt
I have always liked this painting. Bierstadt was apparently quite the operator. / I’ve been in DC the past few days and had the chance to spend a few hours at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It is the best museum in a city full of great museums. It shares the old patent office building with the National Portrait Gallery which in itself is pretty cool. While there I got the chance to see some of the people that Peter Carroll and I worked with on the Lunder Conservation Center project, and had a really nice visit. / Back to Massachusetts tomorrow and will mail out the next level of rewards for the suitcase backers.
John Wilson Painting
I love this painting. John had given it to me in December, but since it needed to be taken off the stretchers for transport back to the States I wasn’t able to get it until Peter and I were back in the UK in March. We rolled it into a big cardboard tube and I was able to carry it onto the plane. Michelle at Hope and Feathers did a fantastic job restretching it and built a great frame. I was so happy to pick it up yesterday. It looks great in the living room.
Rewards
I am pretty close to mailing the first of the Kickstarter rewards. So for those of you who backed the project at the $10.00 level, watch your mailbox. These are the first prints I have made of this work, and I am thrilled to finally see them on paper. Each print is signed and so the process is a bit slow; tonight I will start addressing the envelopes. You might notice the beautiful Yard-O-Led pencil in the bottom of the photo. It was a gift from my great friend John Wilson and it is the perfect writing instrument for signing the prints. It makes me so happy to be using it.
Oyster Bar
Sorry, it’s been a while. / I took the Metro North train from New Haven to New York on Friday. I could have taken Amtrak from Springfield, but it goes into Penn Station and I prefer Grand Central. I arranged to arrive with time to spare, so I had some Cotuits and a pan roast at the Oyster Bar. / Just after my Kickstarter page went up, Zoe Crossland from Columbia University contacted me about coming down to give a seminar on the Willard suitcases project. She connected me with Brian Boyd who set it all up, and at 5.30 I was sitting in a room with a great group of faculty and students from the anthropology and archeology departments. I was hoping for lots of feedback and dialogue and wasn’t disappointed. I showed selected photos from what I have done so far and we had a great discussion. / Had a very productive day at the museum last Thursday and will be back shooting in the next few days.
Jon Crispin's Notebook 
1 comment