One Less Color Processor in the Metro

The College of Visual Arts held it's last class on Friday, May 3, 2012. The night before, I drained and powered down our 31" Kreonite color processor. The next day, I found a work-study student changed the background of the equipment checkout computer in the Photo Lab to this:

Click to enlarge.

"Taking the color processor off life support. It's official - she's dead."

That's a photo of my hand unplugging the processor for the last time. Brunhilda, rest in peace. May you be resurrected someday.

The Official End of CVA

Back in January, I posted about giving a speech to current College of Visual Arts students once they learned that CVA was going to be closing. Then a week later, I posted about "Save CVA" and some great shirts that an alumni was making. Shortly after that, a group called "CVA Action" was formed to help try to stop the closure of the school and to raise money to keep The College open.

"CVA Action" Rally at CVA 2 weeks ago.

Many of us were optimistic.

Realistically, the numbers were staggering: CVA Action needed to raise about 3 million dollars in a few weeks. They had a plan in place to not have CVA open for the 2013-14 school year (because current students have found other schools and there was no recruiting being the school was planning to close), but then to open back up as a smaller institution in the fall of 2014. After a few weeks of collecting money and asking for donations, CVA Action still hadn't quite hit the $100,000 mark. That's an AMAZING amount of money to have raised in such a short period of time for a small school, but it wasn't enough. Last week, the board of trustees for CVA announced that it was no longer possible to save the school, and CVA Action came out with this statement:

Sad News

Sad news from the last night’s Board of Trustees Meeting: The College of Visual Arts Board of Trustees reaffirmed last night that CVA will be closed at the end of this school year. They took a look at our plan, decided that if we could raise $3 million dollars in two weeks they might be willing to put a couple of CVA Action people on the board and try to open again in a year. CVA Action was formed to keep CVA open.

The Board of Trustees asked us to take part in closing the school, and we cannot do that. We voted unanimously to reject the trustees’ offer. We are heartbroken and angry. We feel that this did not have to happen this way, had the Board of Trustees and school administration had told us of the dire financial situation last Fall. But that’s not the hand we were dealt.

The student response was awesome. The work the students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends did was hugely effective. In the past two weeks you reached out into the community and you found support. You showed true creativity. If we had seen that from the administration and the trustees a year or six months ago, we might have been celebrating tonight. We do have things to celebrate. The students and graduates of the College of Visual Arts are making a difference in the world. Whether it is making beautiful art, founding the digital communications division of a major advertising agency, teaching or any of the other things our fellow alumni are doing, the school has a wonderful legacy to celebrate.

Painting by Eugène Delacroix, modified by Keri Huber

I'm not going to air my dirty laundry here - if you want to know what I think happened at CVA, you'll have to talk to me in person. It seems it was not only because of declining enrollment and rising costs. I feel much the same as many of the other full-time faculty members at the school. But now that's hardly here nor there.

Photo from Michelle Stolz (current CVA student and former student of mine).

It's been amazing to watch my students in these final few weeks at CVA. They're all taken care of and are (mostly) either entering MCAD through a "teach out" agreement, or they've applied and been accepted at a different school. Lately, their shift as been to us as their professors: "So Steve, what are YOU doing after CVA?" My answer is much like many others: I don't know. (I've applied for a few other teaching positions in the Metro area, but I'm still waiting to hear back.) They're so concerned for all of us. They're actually throwing a faculty and staff appreciation party for us later tonight. How sweet.

They're also coming together in other "fun" ways. This past weekend was the final "CVA Prom." I had to miss this event, but it looked fantastic. It was put together by students who held a drawing rally to raise money for it, and it was just the kind of thing you'll find CVA students doing - finding ways to get things done.

Pre-prom photo by Maria Cameron.


Photo by Maria Santiago.


Photo by Maria Santiago.


Photo by Maria Santiago.

To my knowledge, the only other CVA Prom was back when I was a student in the early 2000s. We made a "CVA Beefcake Calendar" with the men of CVA. (I have vehemently denied the existence of this calendar to current students until this very moment.) We sold copies, had a "meet the beefcakes calendar signing party," and made around $500 to rent a dance hall, purchase kegs, hire a rent-a-cop, and "live it up" for the night.

The marquee originally said "CVA PROM," but we changed it.






Two of my all-time top-10 favorite CVA people.






Paul always had a way with the ladies.


Lookin' good, fellas.


Moose and my fiancée.


My fiancée being kissed by my soon-to-be best man.






Marcy, my official CVA date. And I forgot that I wore THAT. (That entire outfit cost me $8.)






This sums up our prom perfectly.

Of course there have been other CVA dances and events, but what set these 2 proms off from others is that they were totally student-driven. Ten years ago, the school "officially" had nothing to do with the Prom. We just all got together for good time. That's the joy of CVA - this school has taught students how to make things happen.

It's going to be an interesting final few weeks at CVA. This is uncharted territory for many of us. Wish us all luck. (But chances are, if you're a typical hard-working, motivated, resourceful CVA student or graduate, you won't need "luck.")

Dorothea Lange on Cameras

Purchase a print of this here.

X-Ray Selfie

A Semester's Worth of 35mm Film

I saved all the 35mm film cartridges from the Photo Lab last semester at the College of Visual Arts. Here are all 225 torn-open film cartridges that were processed last semester between 2 Intro to Photo classes:

Click to enlarge


Click to enlarge

Just for fun.

My Work as part of the 'Voyages' Issue of the New York Times Magazine Website

As I explained in my last post, I was one of many photographers hired to do a nationwide project for the New York Times Magazine. But after shooting, the Times changed their idea to just be around the New York City area.

A few weeks after that (under a week ago), they opened it back up to anyone around the nation - they were going to feature more work on their website. Thursday night, I saw that one of my photos had made the cut - I was one of about 30 photographers included on their site, and I was among names like Walter Iooss and Gregory Heisler.

The NY Times Magazine website for their "Voyages" issue.


My image in the middle from along the Mississippi - an area I run by a few times a month.


Close up from the website.

A few more photos have since been added, so now there are 42 in the gallery. Check out the online "Local Voyages" project here, and look for the "Voyages" issue to come out this Sunday on newsstands.

Go to my last post to see everything I shot for this project.

And go here (and start scrolling down) to see details from the other 4 projects I've done over the years for the NY Times Magazine. I've had a few friends ask about my other projects for them recently.

New York Times Magazine "Local Voyages" Project

I originally posted what appears below on Saturday, February 9th. I took it down temporarily right after that because the NY Times didn't want anything out there about the project (even if they were images that they weren't going to publish). Well, the project is being published this weekend, so they're now ready for any of these shots to go public.

You'll read shortly that I was hired to be one of the photographers doing this project for the Times Magazine, but then they decided to make it a local project a few days later and not use any photos from outside of the NY area (which includes my images). The GOOD NEWS is that they changed their project AGAIN, and one of my images below made it onto their website. More on that in a few days.

In the meantime, here's the original post of mine from earlier last month:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

[Originally posted February 9, 2013.]

On Wednesday, I got a phone call from one of the photo editors at the New York Times Magazine. She asked me to take part in a nationwide photo project they were calling "Local Voyages." They were asking photographers who use Instagram from all across the USA to take a short "local voyage" to show or uncover something that might make people say "who knew that was there?" It had to be a short trip or something that could be discovered over a long lunch. The only other rules were that it had to be near home, you couldn't touch the images in Photoshop, and you had to use your camera phone and Instagram to submit your images.

Intriguing!

And in typical magazine fashion, they wanted the photos in 5 days.

I had a few ideas, and they all revolved around the Mississippi River. Everyone KNOWS the River is there, but there are parts of it that are a little less known. I ended up using the idea that someone working in Downtown Minneapolis could head south over a long lunch and run / hike along the Mississippi River to Minnehaha Falls. There's the popular "River Road" that has a trail right along it that could get a person from downtown to the Falls, but there are plenty of hidden trails that wind directly along the River's edge that I wanted to explore for this. (I live less than a mile off of the River, and there were plenty of trails that even I hadn't explored, and I run down along the River a few times a week.)

Before I show some of my photos, you need to know the rest of the story. I was called by the NY Times Magazine on Wednesday, and I went out to shoot / run on Thursday morning. On Friday, I learned that they changed the project to just be about NY City and the surrounding area. So my photos won't be used by the Times, but I'd still like to show them here.

So here's my edit of 16 photos from this project that starts with foggy downtown seen from the Stone Arch Bridge:

Under the Interstate 94 bridge connecting Minneapolis and St. Paul.


Frozen sewer drains below Franklin Ave.








Lake Street Bridge.


Hidden waterfall near the University of St. Thomas.

And then I arrived at Minnehaha Falls, and all 50 feet of it was frozen solid:

Slowest run ever.

So none of these will be seen outside of my blog, but I still wanted to share them all with you. I can't wait to check out the "Local Voyages" photo project in the New York Times Magazine in the next few weeks to see what it ended up looking like. I'll let you know if I learn more about when that project is being published.

Finding Vivian Maier

Add this to your "must see" list. What a woman of mystery....

http://youtu.be/2o2nBhQ67Zc

Photo Journals

Lisa Congdon has just created a journal filled with photo-related quotes that will soon be available.