Downbound Train

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform Downbound Train at the Times Union Center in Albany, April 16, 2012

Bruce Springsteen performs an acoustic Janey in Albany on April 16th 2012 as a special request. Before singing the song Springsteen said,""This is for Molly, in memory of her mom, Jane."

Jackie Robinson Day 2012

Jackie Robinson during his collegiate years in Los Angeles

"A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."
-Jackie Robinson

"When Jackie Robinson took the field in Brooklyn 65 years ago, he transcended the sport he loved and helped change our country in the most powerful way imaginable.It is a privilege for Major League Baseball to celebrate Jackie's enduring legacy each year, and we are proud that every April 15th, our young fans around the world have an opportunity to learn everything that the No. 42 stands for -- courage, grace and determination."

-Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig 

Today marks the 65th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Jackie Robinson was the first African-American baseball player to compete in the major leagues when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Today in honor of Robinson, every player in Major League Baseball  will wear Jackie Robinson’s No. 42. 

Rachel Robinson, Jackie's wife, had vivid memories of April 15, 1947:


"As Jackie Robinson was getting ready to break baseball's color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Rachel was hustling to get to Ebbets Field in time to see it."


"She waited a long time for a taxi because drivers routinely passed up black passengers. She worried their baby, Jackie Jr., would be cold because she had dressed him in spring clothes. And she stopped at a hot dog stand in the ballpark, where a vendor was kind enough to heat the boy's bottle."

Rachel Robinson at the stadium. (From Spike Lee's documentary on Baseball and Jackie Robinson)

"It was an exciting, exhilarating time — but it also was a stressful time," Rachel Robinson said.
Rachel and Jackie met while they both were students at UCLA. Rachel Robinson earned a degree in nursing from the UCSF School of Nursing in 1945 before marrying Jackie in 1946. 
A few years after Jackie Robinson's retirement from baseball, Rachel returned to school and earned a masters degree from New York University. In 1965 Rachel became an Assistant Professor of Nursing at Yale University.



-Jackie Robinson during his collegiate years at UCLA played football, ran track, was the leading scorer on the basketball team and played baseball.






More on Jackie Robinson and Rachel Robinson at:

Baseball pays tribute to pioneer Robinson

Los Angeles Dodgers Site on Jackie Robinson


New York Times on Jackie Robinson


Rachel Robinson at UCSF

In the Hanami Rain

Gregg Chadwick
In the Hanami Rain
40"x30" oil on linen 2012

Where Dreams Come True: Caine's Arcade

 

Please watch as 9 year old Caine Monroy, who built an elaborate cardboard arcade inside his dad’s used auto parts store, is about to have the best day of his life...

A short film by Nirvan, produced by Interconnected.

Hours

Saturday: 8am – 5pm*

Sundays: by appointment*

* Appointments: to schedule a visit,  please call 323-225-5997 and ask for George. 

Address

Caine’s Arcade (located inside Smart Parts Aftermarket)

538 N. Mission Rd

Boyle Heights, CA 90033

View Larger Map

More at:

Caine's Arcade

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Stopped Time: The Motion Studies of Eadweard Muybridge

by Gregg Chadwick

Eadweard Muybridge
Muybridge Animal Locomotion, plate 288

circa 1887

© University of Pennsylvania | uarc@pobox.upenn.edu

"....'See how curiously,' said Mr. Muybridge, referring to a photographic series (Plate 288 shown above) of one of our most prominent University baseball nine, 'and yet how perfectly, this plate illustrates the occurrence of an error in catching.' True enough. In the successive pictures the ball is muffed, strikes the player's thigh, runs up under his arm and across his back, while he is looking eagerly on the wrong side for it."
- The  Pennsylvanian, 1886 


In the 19th century the railroad, the telegraph and the camera transformed our experience of space and time.  JMW Turner's painting Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway documents in oil paint the beginnings of this perceptual shift.  In Turner's work, the powerful steam engine races from the painting's perspectival vanishing point into the viewer's space, breaking free of pictorial constraints. 

JMW Turner
Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway
36"x48" oil on canvas 1844
National Gallery, London

Eadweard Muybridge, born 182 years ago today, took Turner's artistic explorations and  expanded upon them. Muybridge's photographic stop action photos revolutionized our understanding of human and animal movement.

Eadweard Muybridge
Muybridge Animal Locomotion, plate639

circa 1887

© University of Pennsylvania | uarc@pobox.upenn.edu

 Not content with the long exposure times needed to create photographic plates, Muybridge's artistic explorations with instantaneous photography led to his groundbreaking motion studies. In the 1870s, at the Palo Alto Stock Farm owned by railroad baron and former California Governor Leland Stanford, Eadweard Muybridge invented his photographic method for the capture of high-speed action. Muybridge devised a system for documenting animal locomotion by using a series of cameras which produced sequential images of stilled movement on glass photographic plates. These photographs were arguably the first successful photographs of rapid motion and they revolutionized photography and the natural sciences.

Photograph of one of the three batteries of cameras, with plateholder,
used by Muybridge to produce the Animal Locomotion images
circa 1887
© University of Pennsylvania | uarc@pobox.upenn.edu

 These sequential images seemed to cut time into slices. The images recorded fractions of a second, which the unaided human eye had not been able to perceive before. Soon Muybridge would set his photographs into motion with his early motion picture device the Zoopraxiscope
 and hand drawn silhouettes of his horse in motion photos seemed to gallop fluidly when viewed through the machine.

Muybridge’s Zoopraxiscope on display at the Kingston Museum
Kingston upon Thames, UK

Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope inspired Thomas Edison and William Kennedy Dickson's Kinetoscope, which in time led to the modern film projector.

After his photographic success in California, Eadweard Muybridge moved east and continued his studies with the assistance of the University of Pennsylvania in the 1880's. 

Eadweard Muybridge's outdoor camera house, 36th and Pine Streets, Philadelphia

circa 1886

© University of Pennsylvania | uarc@pobox.upenn.edu

Members of the commission overseeing Muybridge's work at Penn included Thomas Eakins as well as professors from Penn's Medical, Veterinary and Engineering Schools. Student-athlete's and faculty members at Penn posed for Muybridge's motion studies.

Thomas Eakins
A May Morning in the Park (The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand)
23 3/4" x 36" oil on canvas 1879-1880
Collection Philadelphia Museum of Art

The artist Thomas Eakins, inspired by his interactions with Muybridge in Philadelphia, painted A May Morning in the Park (The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand). Eakin's depiction of a horse and carriage in stop-action motion was unprecedented in painting and seemed off putting to many contemporary viewers. One critic of the time wrote, "The effect of the picture as a whole it is impossible to accept as true, unless it be that Mr. Eakins' perceptions are right and those of everybody else are wrong."  Eakin's dismissed the criticism and continued his explorations of motion in his photographic and painted works. 

Muybridge's groundbreaking work continues to influence artists across the globe. The Japanese filmmaker Koji Yammamura's animated work Muybridge's Strings is a poetic homage to Muybridge and a poignant contemplation of time and memory: "Though separated by a century and an ocean, the lives of photographer Eadweard Muybridge and that of a Japanese mother clash poetically, sharing the irrepressible human desire to make time stand still."




Trailer for the animated film Muybridge's Strings by the Japanese filmmaker Koji Yamamura.



2011 /12 min. 39sec./ 35 mm /No dialogue /Canada, Japan
Techniques: Drawing and painting on paper


A CO-PRODUCTION OF THE NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA, NHK AND POLYGON PICTURES
Direction, Script, Editing Koji Yamamura
Original Music, Sound Design Normand Roger, Pierre Yves Drapeau, Denis Chartrand
Executive Producers David Verrall (NFB), Kenji Saito (NHK), Shuzo John Shiota (Polygon)
Producers Michael Fukushima (NFB), Keisuke Tsuchihashi (NHK), Shuzo John Shiota (Polygon)

Koji Yamamura at work on Muybridge's Strings

Gregg Chadwick
I Canti (The Cantos)
78"x60" oil on linen 2011

My own work I Canti (The Cantos) can be seen as a rumination on time and memory inspired by Muybridge's discoveries.

Also in the Los Angeles area, Mark Arnon Rosen and Wendy Marvel's  mechanical flip books evoke a world caught between Muybridge and the 21st century:

And today Google got into the act with a witty Google Doodle honoring Muybridge:

More at:
Yamamura Animation
Eadweard Muybridge Doodle
X-Ray Dreams

The author Rebecca Solnit considers Eadweard Muybridge and the perceptual revolution of the 19th century in her marvelous book River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West.

Time Stands Still: Muybridge and the Instantaneous Photography Movement

Trayvon Martin Tribute: Cruel World by Zone Fwey

A moving tribute to Trayvon Martin by Minneapolis based recording duo Zone Fwey.

Listen Here:


More at:
Zone Fwey

Please Support Lori Compas for the Wisconsin State Senate!

For my friends and family in Wisconsin and across the United States.
Please support Lori Compas in her May 8, 2012 election for Wisconsin State Senate in Wisconsin's 13th Senate District!


 Find out how Lori plans to restore honesty and integrity to Wisconsin's political system.


Much more info here:
Lori Compas for Wisconsin!

A message from Lori about the upcoming primary election on May:

Lori Compas for State Senate

Don't fall for Scott Fitzgerald's tricks: The person running against me in the primary is a FAKE DEMOCRAT. His name is Gary Ellerman and he's a Fitzgerald supporter. This photo of him with Scott Fitzgerald is all over the internet -- it was taken at the 2012 Jefferson County Republicans' Lincoln Day Dinner. As you can see he has the GOP elephants on his nametag. And yet his name will be on the primary ballot with a D after it -- this is a lie, plain and simple. Please tell your friends.

Link to Fake Democrat Photo Here

Image and Music

by Gregg Chadwick

In response to Spring for Music's Round Two query in the 2012 Great Blogger

Challenge:

We live in an aggressively visual age; images dominate the popular culture. 
But which art form has the most to say about contemporary culture, and why?

Tokyo Streets
photo by Gregg Chadwick 

The dense visual language of the Tokyo cityscape immediately came to mind when I considered Spring for Music's second query in the 2012 Great Blogger Challenge.

The visual cacophony of signs and images that line the streets of the city's shopping districts provide a visual metaphor for the images that threaten to overload us each day as we turn on our computers and televisions. But do images themselves say more than other art forms about contemporary culture? The uncertainty and ambiguity often found in our 21st century lives calls for a rich cultural exploration that images may only hint at.   

When presented with an image, most people begin a process, which is often involuntary, of decoding. The mystery of the moment is often disregarded as we search for meaning as we engage in a kind of mental translation. Who or what is depicted? Should the viewer smile or cry? Would I like to possess this thing, person, moment? 

Perhaps if we look through a few photographs we can get a sense of  the problem at hand. The photo below is often confusing to individual viewers. What is happening here? Is it a sort of photoshopped collage? Without text or a caption it is difficult to pull meaning from the image.  

Context helps in the understanding of the image. I took the photo at the Ghibli Museum outside Tokyo, where the life and work of the amazing Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki is celebrated. 

It is true that we are bombarded daily by imagery. What is often missed is that this phenomenon is nothing new. For example, Lucas Cranach's copy of Hieronymous Bosch's Altarpiece with the Last Judgement provides a cornucopia of beatific and horrific imagery all at once.

Lucas Cranach

Altarpiece with the Last Judgement 

(copy of Hieronymus Bosch's triptych)

  c.1524

Gemäldegalerie, Berlin 

photo by Gregg Chadwick

A closer look at a detail of Cranach's painting presents symbolic messages that simultaneously dazzle the eye and imply a sonic landscape for the ear.

Lucas Cranach

Altarpiece with the Last Judgement (detail) 

(copy of Hieronymus Bosch's triptych)

  c.1524

Gemäldegalerie, Berlin 

photo by Gregg Chadwick

While images tend to be viewed individually or with a small group, the experience of music may be more communal. Composing is often a solitary process, but performance usually involves a give and take between musician and audience.  

Image and Music in Venice, Italy
photo by Gregg Chadwick

In this communal aspect, music has a lot to say about contemporary culture. 

Music has the ability to move us to a communal expression of hope in the face of trouble and, for at least a moment, a rush of joy. This musical rush is akin to the shared glory that spectators feel as their team triumphs on the sporting field. The philosophers Hubert Dreyfus, from UC Berkeley, and Sean Kelly, from Harvard, speak of this Homeric feeling of wonder and gratitude in their marvelous book, All Things Shining:

'There are moments in sport - either in the playing of them or in the witnessing of them - during which something so overpowering happens that it wells up before you as a palpable presence and carries you along as on a powerful wave. At that moment there is no question of ironic distance from the event. That is the moment when the sacred shines."

Like the fans at a Giants football game, the crowd at a concert also gets swept up in a joyous, sacred expression of shared hopes and dreams that hard times cannot defeat.

U2 has used their music to reflect upon contemporary global events. Drawing on the troubles in Northern Ireland, they addressed the contemporary issues in Iran. Audiences responded.

U2 performing Sunday Bloody Sunday during their 360 degrees world tour at the Rose Bowl on October 25th, 2009.

As the song Sunday Bloody Sunday opens, U2 scrolls the lyrics from the Rumi poem Azadi. The word Azadi itself simply means Freedom. U2 supported Artists 4 Freedom by using the Rumi poem which provides the lyrics to Dj Spooky and Sussan Deyhim's track, Azadi (The New Complexity). U2's multimedia screens mash together the lyrics to Azadi along with photos of the protestors in Iran and artworks by Shirin Neshat. I too was inspired and painted Neda the day after her murder in Iran.

Gregg Chadwick
The Call - ندا -Neda
36"x48" oil on linen 2009

Bruce Springsteen's most recent album Wrecking Ball is a scathing indictment of the current state of American society. This album weaves together history, politics, and contemporary societal issues to create a powerful musical expression that challenges and then ultimately unites and ignites his audience. The powerful songs on this album have inspired me in relation to image and meaning.

Gregg Chadwick
Call and Echo
24"x18" oil on linen 2011 

Living Colour's version of Springsteen's American Skin (41 Shots) is a heartbreaking song that honors the senseless death of Amadou Diallo at the hands of the NYPD as he reached for his wallet in an attempt to placate a group of undercover cop's demands. More than once, because of this event, I have told my son, "If an officer stops you - Promise me, you always be polite. And that you'll never. never run away. Promise that you'll always keep your hands in sight."

The death of Trayvon Martin has obviously weighed on Bruce Springsteen and his audiences this past week in Tampa, Boston, and Philadelphia. During three consecutive shows, the band played American Skin (41 Shots) and Springsteen released the professionally shot video on his website along with the lyrics to the song. On Wednesday night in Philadelphia, Springsteen dedicated the song with the words, "This is for Trayvon."

Clearly, music creates a dynamic interaction with a live audience that speaks to and of contemporary culture in powerful and life affirming ways.