Day 1_ After picking the Guitar on Tuesday, yesterday finally washed it, did a little sanding over and built a "very homemade" box to do the spray painting to apply the first coats of primer.
Started filming the whole process too, which I want to use as narrative point for a short film about Grafton and Paramount Records. I am almost finished with the script for it and got permission to use the Paramount Records Walking Tour booklet by one of its writers, Angela Mack, as a guide in reference to the historic sites involved on the history of the Paramount Records Studio and pressing plant. Also, I got some tips in regards of usage of the music for the film. I will be checking the Library of Congress some time soon.
Really excited about all this. Hopefully soon, it will look different as I pictured on my head.
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Handwritten type, then scanned and traced on Adobe Illustrator
I am very really excited to share with you today what I consider my first "short" (complete). Despite of still being on the learning curve, but I am still walking, slow, but steady.
Ladies and gentleman, with you...
"Ashes of a Midwest Postcard"
I already talked somehow about the why and what of this project three posts earlier, so I won't say anything else, but I leave here some more pictures from it. I hope you enjoy and thank you.
F. Martín Morante.
P.S_ I will HIGHLY recommend to watch the video on the Vimeo channel, doing click HERE. Let it load all the way first and put the volume up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, sit and enjoy.
Handmade type, scanned, traced and worked into Adobe Illustrator.
The designs seen above are the ones I presented to the open call by the Village of Grafton, for artists to come up with designs for the metal guitar banners planned to decorate the Paramount Plaza in Grafton, Wisconsin. Today I was officially notified that I have been selected as one of the 8 artists that will be displayed permanently on the Plaza, which it fills me with a lot of pride and joy for various reasons. Despite that the monetary award it is well received, it is the fact itself. As a "frustrated musician" (the farthest I got is to try to play the harmonica only to make the dogs cry) but with a deep love for music, have the honor of having a piece of my artwork that celebrates the influence of american music in a plaza it is... really motivating (for lack of a better word).
About Paramount Records and Grafton.
I have to admit that the legacy of Paramount Records and the connection to Grafton it has been a recent discovery for myself (after I moved here 8 years ago). It will make this post too long to write you the whole story here, but if you are really interested on it, visit Paramount´s website (click HERE) or the article about it on Wikipedia (click HERE). It is a really good tale if you are into music history.
About the design.
The "Folk Art Guitar" design was conceived to represent the relationship between the afro-american community and the production of the so-called "race records" at Paramount Records in Grafton, Wisconsin during the first decades of the past century.
By using handmade lettering, an element frequently found in Southern Folk Art (as I was able to see when living in Alabama), I wanted to link the musicians that in the majority of the cases - that made it into the recording studios at Paramount- were originally from the southern region of the United States and the long tradition of song writing and self-thaught music skills found in North American culture.
I chose the words for this design after conducting some research on the facts regarding this musical and business collaboration, which harvested so many musical fruits (as the famous 12000s Series catalogue). Sadly, for a matter of space, I could not add the whole list of musicians that passed through Grafton and whose music became part of the "Paramount Catalogue", but I still added some of the names that left a deep mark not only in Grafton but also on the American music history as well, as it was Charlie Patton, Blind Lemon, Alberta Hunter, etc.
I will be posting more about it (photos or video) soon, as I started to work on the painting of the guitar.
This are my favorite ones from yesterday. Did a lot of walking and saw a lot of exhibits. Spent 4 hours at the "Institute" (so much to see and talk about that will make this post too long), toured 3 exhibits at the Chicago Cultural Center (1 on creative typography, one on the subject of the representation of death through art and one on printmaking from Poland), another printmaking exhibit by local Chicago artists on Expo 72 and a short photo-exhibit by someone I did not know, Teenie Harries, at the Harold Washington Public Library. Nice enjoyed day despite the random rain.
The one above is one my favorite pictures from Chicago. It looks like a simple picture, but I really do like it, because it represents somehow the way I feel every time I go there. It becomes "me and the city", just that. Surrounded by concrete, every corner becomes an invitation which I take with great pleasure. Did I say I love this city? Despite that I have been living on the country side for quite a while, which I already got used to it (love it), I still need once and a while my share of city traffic, noise, speed, etc, etc, and "Chi-Town" its to me what for many people in Montevideo is to go to Buenos Aires. It is some type of "inward escape".
I am counting the hours (less than 48) to jump on the 5.45 AM bus to Union Station, and spend the whole day simply walking around, do some galleries and museums (got my ticket already for the Art Institute of Chicago) and some good music. That will be my way to welcome the Spring and I am happy for that.
After getting the necessary permission, I finally made my way to photograph the abandoned house on Hawthorne Road, not far from where I live. I been fascinated with this house for quite a while, but I did not wanted to go just because it is one of those photographic "fetishes turned into cliches", but because there was a deep reason behind that fascination. So to give an idea, it took me around five years (not kidding) to cross those gates yesterday, and there was a mix of feelings to which I can only put words to, but to explain them... that's another matter. A morbid curiosity, fascination, wonder, or call it "something" invaded me as I walked around it, like if I was unlocking some type of mystery that in reality it existed only in my head.
Despite of having seen many interesting abandoned places through time, I always do a mental effort to be able to see or imagined them as the way they may have looked on their "better times". Who lived there, since when, how long, why they left, why no one took interest on saving the place?, etc, etc, are the questions that jump right at me, at the same time that I tend to associate the place with particular periods of history to which they may have belonged. But there is a question, where is that people now? that finds a mirror in another object I have interest too, the so-called "found photographs". Discarded pictures, like the ones you find on flea markets (see below), antique shops or garage sales can make me spend some nice time looking at them in pure wonder. Who is this people?, are there descendants from them?, where did they lived?, were they happy?, what happened to them?, etc,etc; but above all, what made that photograph to exist today (implying what made the person to take it or to have it taken)?, as if they are the still standing remains of someone's life. And the first word that comes straight as somehow of an answer is: immortality.
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"She" (On her Sunday Dress) / Unknown author. Titled by me.
From my personal collection (part of a personal study on passing of time)
Found on the flea market Maxwell's Days
Cedarburg, Wisconsin, 2011.
So yesterday, as I submerged myself in the remains of someone else's life, I wondered about myself and our idea and desire for immortality that express itself on many different ways by what we leave behind purposedly, be through blood descendants or through material possessions (the ones we possessed or the ones we have created in order to do not be forgotten), and found an open window that presents answers with even many more questions.
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"Untitled" (part of a personal study on time passing)
Deeply thankful to Bob Wirth for granting me unlimited access to the house.
(*) The title for this post comes intentionally from the first words of "The House of the Rising Sun" of unknown/not established authorship but performed by The Animals", by who I heard this song and which the lyrics have an associated meaning by me with what I wrote here. You can hear the song by pressing play below.
ZIP Code Art_ "The Place You Live In & You See It!
This video it is a promotional for the workshop I will be conducting between June and August at the NSAA, as part of the Academy's programs for the summer.
Students with an interest on visual arts as chosen medium for self-expression will be guided on how to start and develop visual projects using their block, neighborhood, town or city as inspiration and representation ground. Using collage, drawing, painting and photography, the participants will create visual pieces that range from a simple postcard to a framed piece while creating a lasting bond with their community.
At the end of the workshop, the created pieces from it will be part of the SATURATION show, during September at the Arts Mill of Grafton.
More details will be available (cost, schedule, times, etc) upon release of the Summer 2012 brochure.
I just received one of the printed posters (above) I designed for the NSAA using Adobe Illustrator. An amount of 300 posters are going around the city on these days. Really happy to see that. Thanks to Philipp Lithographing Company for a nice printing job!!!!!
At most it has been accomplice of human restlessness"
_ Joseph Conrad from the "Mirror to the Sea".
Sadly, last Saturday the above quote made itself visible in several and ironic ways. The sea (or in this case the lake) is not friendly to man, as the man many times is neither friendly to sea. After a conversation about the pictures I been taking on South Beach (and how much I LIKE the place itself), I was invited by Kit Walters to join the program "Adopt a Beach", one of the many efforts by the "Alliance for the Great Lakes" to do volunteer beach clean-up and data collection, an effort that Kit herself in this case coordinates and to which I am really glad to become part of.
Dawn joined me, as 6 or 7 seven volunteers got together on the beach around 10 AM and armed with plastic bags, a clipboard and some gloves, we spent a nice time picking up as much as we could. In a very short distance, we found ourselves running out of space to write on the clipboard due to the vast amount of objects (or partial objects) we were finding. (Take in account that was the first date of beach cleaning.) Cigarette lighters, tennis balls, the infamous aluminum foil balloons, styrofoam scraps, plastic bottles, etc, etc. This last ones are the ones that impressed me the most. We picked so many plastic bottles (the ones on the above picture are just one of the filled bags), that It makes you ask how we can litter so much and so irresponsibly?.
I swim there, I go for walks, I sit and watch the water for long periods of time, but I am not the only one, there is a lot of people that do so, as also many of the creatures that inhabit the lake do. Not long ago I found a beautiful and huge seagull dead on the beach (not the bird on the below picture) all tangled on a fishing net, and the lure and hook right at her mouth. It did not die of natural causes for sure. That is one of the reasons why I think we should try to do our small part to make it better. It is a effort that should be collective, as we ALL benefit from it. If you are interested on participate on this effort, please visit the Alliance for the Great Lakes website or shot me an e-mail and I gladly will pass it on or simply pick couple of things you find when you go for a walk.
Sadly, added to the semi-wake up call due to all the above described, the day was somehow stained by tragedy. As we were on the beach, I saw how someone got in a kayak into the lake, when the waves and the wind were not the most appropriate to do so I thought. Sadly I came to find out that day late in the afternoon that rescue teams have pulled out a 24 year old man out of the Port Washington waters who got separated from his kayak, just 1 hour after I saw him. Yesterday I came to find out that the guy died despite the efforts to save him.
A sad lost that maybe could have been prevented and for which I feel sorry for the guy and his family.
