The Cathedral Light Show: Welcome to Super Bowl Week in New Orleans

Checkout these psychedelic, kaleidoscopic images projected onto St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. It's been a nightly extravaganza that will continue through Sunday.

The laser light show splashes across the Cathedral and neighboring buildings including the Cabildo and the Presbetere. Photos courtesy America's photographer Gary Firstenberg.

A kissing booth for Travis and Taylor each time he scores.

The Vince Lombardi Trophy being delivered by
former New Orleans Saints player Deuce McAlester.

Our intrepid photographer.

Check out more of Gary's work at Smugmug

And here are images from last year's Big Game in Vegas.

For more, Google >>Gary Firstenberg Ennyman<<

 

THANK YOU, GARY

Election Integrity

Forty years ago a photographer friend of mine used to use his vacations to travel abroad and capture images of exotic or fascinating places. One year he went to a country in South America, it may have been Uruguay--and while there a national election took place. 

When he returned and shared his photos, the ones he took on election day were especially interesting. When you voted, you were required to dip your thumb into a jar of ink so that you were "marked" as having voted. My friend showed photos of smiling people holding up their black thumbs.

What I seem to recall is that voting there was compulsory, so failure to vote meant you did not get tagged with the ink. This also may have served to help ensure no one voted twice. (In theory, you could cut off that thumb and vote again, but then again, that's a pretty extreme method of cheating.

These past two years a lot of noise has been generated by the media regarding the lack of confidence in our election integrity. 

Cheating and ballot box stuffing is nothing new. Read Theodore White's The Making of a President, 1960. Mayor Daley helped JFK win Illinois by cheating. The difference between Trump and Nixon is how they responded to it. When Nixon called JFK in the middle of the night to concede, he let JFK know that he knew it was stolen, but for the sake of the nation he was not going to press it. He learned that he would have to win by a larger margin next time.

The cheating was not widespread, but it was real. 

Ironically, even though much has been made of Trump's efforts to deny the results in 2020, the Democrats did the same in 2016, as this NBC News story points out. 

When Trump won in 2016, busloads of people went to Trump Tower in NYC to protest, with signs that had been mass-produced in advance. (Eyeroll here.) I'm a little anxious for what we may see tonight.

My prayer is that the we tone down the rhetoric and find a way to recapture civility. 

Feel free to comment.

Local Art Seen: Julia Marshall Watercolors and Drawings @ Zeitgeist

Julia Marshall as a photographer in the
Women's Army Corps in WW2.

The following falls into the category of "I didn't know that!" And maybe you didn't either.

When I moved to Duluth in 1986 I recall hearing something about The Marshall Sisters, but I didn't really know the history of Duluth all that well, other than that there was a lot of wealth generated by the mining, logging and shipping industries.

Over time I learned of the philanthropic work Caroline and Julia Marshall undertook on behalf of Duluth. Their work including formation of the Duluth Improvement Association, purchasing land on the waterfront that is now Bayfront Park.

Julia was a founder of the Duluth League of Women Voters and the Duluth Art Institute, and in 1972 was the first woman to serve as a director of the Duluth Chamber of Commerce. She also was a director of the St. Louis County Heritage and Arts Center in Duluth's Union Depot. When she passed away in 1994, nearly 100 years old, she left quite a legacy.

What I never knew was that Julia Marshall not only supported the arts, she was an accomplished artist herself. This month her watercolors and drawing have been displayed in the Zeitgeist Atrium. The show shows another dimension of her life that may be surprising to many.

Patricia Lenz curated the show and sent me information about this quite remarkable woman.

Following graduation from the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, NY, she volunteered in U.S. Army mess halls during World War I. During World War II, she served in the Women’s Army Corps.

Julia was an avid traveler and art/artifact collector. She lived in New York, Chicago, India, and the Middle East and was a long-time resident of Tucson, Arizona, where she began watercolor studies at the Southern Arizona Watercolor Guild.

Among her teachers was Gerry Peirce, a noted western watercolorist and printmaker, who was invited to teach watercolor at the Duluth Art Institute.

During the 50s and 60s she showed watercolors in juried exhibitions in Tucson, AZ and Duluth, MN.
In 1983 the Tweed Museum of Art here featured a portion of Julia Marshall’s work as part of a larger show.

Since her death at her Duluth home in 1994 at the age of 98, her watercolors (and photographs) have been exhibited in a number of venues including:

1998. Minnesota Masters. 7 Women Artists from the Region; Tweed Museum of Art.
1998. JNM Photographs at Tweed Museum of Art, UMD, Duluth, MN.
In 1996, watercolors removed from a storage vault in a Duluth Bank were curated for a series of exhibitions in Duluth and Tucson.
1997. JNM Watercolors at Duluth Depot.
2000. JNM Watercolors at the Lodge On the Desert Sponsored by the Southern Arizona Watercolor Guild and The Duluth Art Institute.
2002. JNM watercolors at Southern Arizona Watercolor Gallery (SAWG) with work of her teacher, Gerry Peirce.
2002. JNM Watercolors, Duluth Art Institute Galleries; . . 2002. JNM Watercolors purchased by Fred and Mary Lewis and donated to the Marshall School Library.

The Julia Newell Marshall Artists fund was established with the Depot Foundation in 2000 using funds from sale of artworks.

Serious Photographer, Too
By the early 1920s, Julia Marshall was captivated by artistic photography. She studied with the former Photo-Secessionist Clarence H. White at the Clarence White School of Photography in New York in 1921-22 and 1927. Her work was exhibited in the 1924 Camera Pictures exhibition organized by the White School's Alumni Association, and in the 1922 First International Kohakai Salon of Photography in Japan.

Pictorial Photographers of America, a national organization begun by White after the demise of the Photo-Secession movement held an annual exhibit: Pictorial Photography in America. Its 1922 catalog featured Marshall's photographic image "Silhouettes—Egypt" showing figures and animals on a low horizon. The publication included only seventy-five illustrations, by the likes of Laura Gilpin, D. J. Ruzicka, Edward Weston, and White, putting her in good company.

In 1923, two of her pictures—again of foreign subjects—were juried into the Pictorial Photographers of America's first annual salon, presented at the Art Center in New York.

She also collected photographic works by many significant fine art photographers and pictorialists. Her collection was later donated to the Tweed and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Her philanthropic activities were many as well as her varied interests. One of her favorite pastimes was canoeing, and her favorite getaway for that: the Brule River.

Check out her work this week. It's just one more reason to be impressed with her life and her example.

In Focus: Photographer Andrew Perfetti

Andrew Perfetti has been a guitarist in Uprising and other local bands for several years. By day he’s been owner of Superior’s Goin’ Postal, a shipping store and copy center. His passion for photography and the arts has resulted in the establishment of Perfetti Photography.

EN: How did you come to take an interest in photography?
AP: I wanted an excuse to go out to different concerts when I wasn’t playing. Artistically I always wanted to be involved so I took photos of bands playing. Some of the bands noticed my work and started requesting that I come, hiring me to do album art and band posters.

I started branching off into different areas of photography, eventually getting hired to do commercial work with bigger name bands and clients outside the local entertainment scene. As a natural progression of my passion for photography and study of art, I gravitated toward fine art photography, developing my own style to integrate fine art with commercial work.

EN: Who are your favorite photographers and why?
AP: My favorite? Annie Leibovitz , for her ability to show the humanity in all of her subjects, famous or non. Robert Mapplethorpe, for his passion for documenting anything he found important. Robert Capa, for his fearless drive to take the important shots.

EN: What are some of the things that inspire you as an artist?
AP: Documenting my life. Photography has allowed me to slow down my mind and take notice of moments that I might otherwise would have disregarded or failed to appreciate the significance of. It also allowed me to reflect on my own life and my role in the lives of my friends and family.

EN: What’s your take on the Twin Ports arts scene?
AP: The Twin Ports Arts Scene has an amazing abundance of talent and passion. It is as relevant to me as the global arts scene and, in my opinion, as full of quality work as you will find in New York or any of the other art hubs in the world or United States. It is not without its cliques though. But as of recently it has been gaining momentum and many fragments of it seem to be uniting for a higher cause.

EN: What has changed in the way you approach your photography over the past three years?
AP: I’ve evolved into more commercial work and less Photoshopping. I approach each image with a little more clarity of thought and a more experienced eye.

EN: Does this mean you’re moving away from fine art photography?
AP: No, I am not moving away… but at the moment time constraints with my business do not afford me the time that I have had in the past. I am evolving and my tastes have changed so that my work is becoming more defined.

EN: In what way?
AP: I am pursuing creative projects with more thought and spending less time hunting for opportunity. In the past a lot of my fine art work has been the result of spontaneity, whereas my schedule is more structured, so I am approaching photography in a more focused manner.

EN: You’ve been involved with some collaborative work…. What kinds of things have you learned through those experiences?
AP: Collaborative work has helped me grow as an artist and given me the opportunity to try new things that would have otherwise been outside the scope of my interests. I have been fortunate to work with some very inspiring and talented artists who have enabled me to participate in other genres that would have otherwise not been on my radar such as Steampunk and fashion.

EN: Your shipping business is also something of an art gallery. Can you describe how this happened? How can other businesses get more linked to artists?
AP: After about four years of developing my business I was offered the opportunity to show some art from a local artist. The experience of being surrounded on a daily basis by that artwork changed my quality of life for the better. It was then suggested that I do an art show for that artist and the success of the show convinced me that other people in the community really enjoyed and appreciated the opportunity to experience the art.

I started getting an abundance of people requesting more art and stopping in to my business just to see the art. I found it to be enriching for both my personal life, my business and the community as a whole. The amount of enthusiasm of the local community towards the art I was showing also helped me develop confidence in my own art. I was overwhelmed by the support and interest of the local business community and city and decided to make it my mission to showcase local artists and provide an opportunity for them to get their work seen.

EN: Do you have any upcoming projects for 2013.
AP: I am currently developing a project with Friends of Industry where we will be creating photo shoots inspired by classic horror and sci-fi films as well as other art forms based on the same ideas, including sculpture, painting, fashion, etc. I'm also creating work for the May 10, 2013 Goin' Postal Art show which will include a lot of my new work and the works of sixteen other artists.

Alan Sparhawk and his Retribution Gospel Choir

EdNote: Find more of Andy's work at www.andrewperfetti.com

Ten Minutes with Andrew Perfetti

It's been said that if a man is worth knowing at all, he's worth knowing well. I met the entrepreneurial Andy through his business Goin' Postal, a Fedex/UPS/shipping store here in Superior, Wisc. When I saw some of his photography I was impressed. And through Facebook learned he is a musician in a number of bands.

Ennyman: How long have you been doing photography seriously?

Andrew Perfetti: Seriously? I've been doing photography seriously for probably about a year. I've been shooting pictures for about 2 years, so I haven't been doing it for that long but it’s become kind of an obsession.

E: What drew you to photography?

AP: Honestly, this is going to sound very strange, but the show Six Feet Under. My family, the last couple years we've been going through some health issues; my father has gotten cancer pretty serious, and my grandfather had cancer, and we took him down the road and he finally passed away last February. But the show, I started watching the show Six Feet Under, and it’s this family of funeral directors. Anyway, one of the characters is a young woman who's having this hard time dealing with her life, and she's very artistic and she finds photography by chance, and finds it to be something she can use as an outlet. Ironically enough, that's kind of what happened to me. So the more that I got absorbed in that show, I thought it could be something that I could really use as a benefit to my personal well being.

E: Doing photography?

AP: Yes, photography. I borrowed my dad's old film camera about 2 years ago. Actually he gave it to me because I didn't have money to buy a digital camera, so I thought I would try this out. So I took the camera and I went out and bought a bunch of rolls of film, and I went over to a friend of mine that had a concert, one of my fellow musicians, and I took pictures at his show. When I developed them, I was surprised how they turned out. So I started reading all kinds of books on photography, and got inspired to pursue it further by this television show, which is kind of shallow, but I just started getting a knack for it and it became sort of a healthy obsession. I'm the kind of person who needs to be doing something all the time. I'm not good at just sitting and not doing anything. I have a hard time relaxing, and photography gives me an excuse to get out of the house and go out and be social, while normally I would be kind of cooped up watching movies and playing music and not interacting with the outside world.

E: You do more than just take pictures. You work with Photoshop and you fine tune, and you seem to have a very interesting vision with regards to your work. Did you have that when you were young and when did this first come out like that?

AP: A lot of that has to do with music. When I was in high school I painted a picture of Jimi Hendrix in my art class, and it took me a couple weeks and it’s a very simple portrait, but I listened to Jimi Hendrix the whole time and I was just obsessed with it through the music. And of course Jimi Hendrix is one of my huge inspirations as a musician. I think if you look at my photos, the feeling and the mood of how I work with color and contrast in my photos is very related to the music I'm listening to while I'm editing them. I listen to a lot of Velvet Underground, a lot of drone music like that, Arcade Fire, things that are very emotive in their context, and music inspires that emotion in me. If I'm in an angry mood I listen to angry music, and my rock and roll photography comes out very aggressive looking. But if I'm listening to melancholy music then my colors are a little softer and there's a little more fog and mystery in the photos. The darkness tells more in a photo to me than the light does. I tend not to use a lot of flash and things like that, but I do a lot of rock and roll photography and a lot of band photography, so that music element kind of dictates how I frame the shot and in the end it dictates how I address the photo in Photoshop. I try not to do any real modification outside of enhancing color, sometimes adding a color filter to change the color a bit and I will enhance or decrease the contrast, but I don't do any photo manipulation per se. I don't add outside structure to my photos or anything along those lines.

E: So you mentioned painting Hendrix to the music of Hendrix. I also paint listening to music and a lot of artists do, probably. But you're also a musician yourself, you play guitar and you're in a number of bands. How did that emerge?

AP: Well when I grew up, my brother and sister were Duluth Accordionaires, and I used to have to go to all of their shows. My parents would load us up in the minivan and we'd drive to Iowa for an Accordion show or Chicago or so forth. And I really, really made it a point to my parents that I did not want to play accordion. I was a fan of rock and roll music from a very young age. My first cassette tape was Michael Jackson’s Thriller when it came out when I was in kindergarten and the very next tape was Iron Maiden Piece of Mind. So I always gravitated towards guitar oriented music and as far as the guitar aspect, when I was in high school, or junior high, I think I was in 8th grade, I had a paper route for many years, and I saved up my paper route money and bought a guitar and I became very attached to it. As a matter of fact when I was a kid I used to sleep with my guitar, and bring it to school with me. I didn't really know how to play it for a couple years but it was always on me, on the bus. I took lessons and I didn't really grow too much until later in high school I became a real fast player, heavy metal, which at the time was kind of popular and I wanted to play fast. And Jimi Hendrix… I liked to listen to that kind of thing but it didn't really appeal to me as far as playing it, because I don't think I was at the age where I understood what they were trying to say. At that age you just have a lot of angst and energy and you just want to play.

I kind of fell out of it and joined the army and through the next eight or ten years didn't really play any music. My parents sent me a guitar when I was overseas in the army and that was nice but I didn't really play much. Then about five years ago, some friends from college needed a band for a college party and I always helped organize events and I said I can’t find a band but I'll just put one together. So that started me back into it. Just like my photography obsession, when I get into something artistic I pursue it to the nth degree. And I played in several bands and I help promote shows and I teach guitar.

I teach advanced soul techniques and stuff like that. I've moved away quite a bit from real structured music and I play reggae now, whereas I used to play blues and heavy metal quite a bit. I feel like guitar helps me paint layers of sound. I use a lot of multiple delay pedals and wop pedal and a lot of effects to build intensity like a whirlwind of sound, and kind of use that to add a layer over to the music. And that's kind of what I feel like I do with my photography. I look at things in layers and add layers or take things away so. It’s always got to be dramatic, which is maybe a downfall, but it’s what I have a flair for.

E: It's who you are.

Lower right: my interpretation of Andy, bringing it home, on guitar.