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Riverbend show honors Native American legacy

Jun 3, 2023 By Admin in Native

COLLINSVILLE — The Riverbend’s Native American heritage was celebrated at the Gateway Center in Collinsville over the weekend as the annual Cahokia Mounds Indian Market Days showcased the diverse creations of Native artisans from across the country.

A part of the convention center was filled with Native American artists and vendors who displayed and sold original creations ranging from jewelry to clothing, paintings and sculptures. Many different tribal affiliations were represented.

William Harjo from Oklahoma, of Creek ancestry, creates Native American flutes from cedar.

“One of my ancestors used to make them,” Harjo said. “You don’t have to play it loud; the sound travels a lot farther than you think.”

Harjo said the flutes can play beautiful tunes, and he demonstrated some for visitors.

“Hunters used to have charm songs to lure the animals to them,” Harjo said. “These flutes fall in that category, where you can make sounds that flow out and get people’s attention.”

Monty Curley Hair is of Navajo ancestry and is originally from Oklahoma. He was surrounded by his seed bead jewelry creations.

“It takes me a long time to create my seed beads,” Curley Hair said. “The colors I use in my beads lift me up. They give me healing and comfort.”

Native American blowguns by the dozens were displayed at Lucas Wildcat’s booth. He has been crafting the devices from river cane for 25 years.

“I learned how to make these from my father,” said Wildcat, a Cherokee from Oklahoma. “It makes me proud of my heritage and helps me to teach it to others.”

Dave Farnham is from Ontario and is a member of the Onondaga Nation. He wasn’t shy about naming the inspiration for his soapstone, moose and deer antler, and buffalo bone sculptures.

“I am inspired by Benjamin Franklin; he’s on the hundred-dollar bill,” Farnham said. “I make what I like and if they like it they buy it.”

Indian Market Days is affiliated with the nearby Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, which is recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site due to its significance as a major cultural center in prehistoric North America. Cahokia Mounds flourished for centuries but had long been abandoned by the time Europeans set foot on the continent.

Saundra Lane, visionary benefactor of MFA’s photography collection, dies at 84

Jun 3, 2023 By Admin in Photography

Decades ago, when Saundra B. Lane and her husband, Bill, were pioneering collectors of photography, she spent a morning in the darkroom with their friend Ansel Adams, from whom they would purchase hundreds of works.

Though bulky and bearded, Adams moved gracefully about his workspace. To see him printing photos was “like watching ballet,” Mrs. Lane told the Globe in 2012, when she announced she was donating her photography collection to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. “He was a big man, but he was so light on his feet.”

A former elementary school teacher who cultivated a discerning eye, Mrs. Lane befriended Adams and other historic artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe while amassing, with her husband, a significant collection of photos and early American modernist painting.

Mrs. Lane, who made history herself when her 2012 donation solidified the MFA’s place in the nation’s top ranks of photography collections, died of complications from dementia last Monday in the North Hill retirement community in Needham.

She was 84 and previously had lived in Lunenburg and the Back Bay.

The collection that, in 2012, she committed to giving to the MFA included some 6,000 photographs, 100 works on paper, and 25 paintings. Some of those works are now headed to the museum.

The MFA, which does not disclose the precise value of donations, would only say in 2012 that her gift was most likely in the nine figures, the Globe reported.

The photos — including roughly 2,500 each from Charles Sheeler and Edward Weston, along with works by Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and Brett Weston, Edward’s son — increased by two-thirds the MFA’s holdings of 9,000 photos.

“We have overnight transformed the photography collection from good to great,” Karen Haas, the Lane senior curator of photographs at the MFA, told the Globe at the time.

About 20 years earlier, Mrs. Lane and William H. Lane Jr., who died in 1995, gave the museum 90 American modernist paintings, including works by O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and Jacob Lawrence. Some of those works are in galleries named for the couple.

Haas worked closely over the years with Mrs. Lane as they became collaborators and friends.

“One of the interesting things about Saundra was that she was born and raised here. So many of our collectors are from elsewhere,” Haas said in an interview Friday. “She was a local person and it was a point of pride to her that she grew up in Chelsea.”

Mrs. Lane, Haas added, “would say, ‘I’m just a girl from Chelsea.’ “

“She was a charming, kind, good person,” said Peter R.V. Brown, a longtime friend who, as part of the Boston firm Nutter McClennen & Fish,was her lawyer for many years.

Indeed, he said, “She was such a lovely human being that people might lose sight of the fact that she was very bright and had a terrific eye. The fact that she collected some extraordinary things after Bill died is Exhibit A about that.”

William Lane was already an established art collector when they met.

She often told the story of her early years, when a benevolent friend of the school where she taught gave teachers free tickets to the opera in Boston.

One evening when she arrived for a performance of Verdi’s “La forza del destino,” or “the force of destiny,” the school’s benefactor was called away at the last moment and wasn’t able to leave her a ticket.

Left stranded at the box office, “I was just starting to go when a gentleman came up and offered me a spare ticket,” she told the Globe in 2012.

The gentleman was Bill Lane, who owned a Leominster plastics company. Sitting next to each other, they listened to the Verdi opera and soon attended other concerts together, sharing their interest in classical music.

“He was handsome and so knowledgeable,” she told the Worcester Telegram & Gazette in 2005.

They married about a year later, in 1963, after he proposed in Silverton, Colo., a subject of memorable Ansel Adams photographs.

“We kicked a can down that street then he asked me to marry him,” she told the Telegram & Gazette, gesturing to an Adams photo of Silverton at the MFA.

At that point, Bill Lane already knew Adams, who welcomed the couple’s visits to see him in California — encounters that led the Lanes to acquire about 500 Adams photographs.

When writing to Bill to encourage their return, Adams indulged his fondness for capital letters, exclamation points, and inventive punctuation.

“We miss you here!!!! Of course, we miss Saundy even more than we miss you,” Adams wrote in 1967, “because she is not only intelligent (as you are), but she is BEAUTIFUL which neither you nor I (or either you or I) (or is it ME?) would claim for ourselves! You will hear from me very soon. And, very soon, some vintage prints will come your way.”

Born in Boston Lying-In Hospital on Sept. 3, 1938, Saundra Baker was the only child of Jeraldine Clarke Baker and Franklin Baker, who parted ways while Saundra was growing up in Chelsea.

Her mother at one point worked for the state Registry of Motor Vehicles. Her father was a merchant mariner who was away for so long so often that eventually the couple remained apart.

“Growing up there was always something special about Saundra,” said her cousin Cliff Clarke of Boston. “She was very personable, she was very well-liked in school, and she did very, very well. She was an excellent student.”

After graduating from Chelsea High School, she graduated from what was then Simmons College with a teaching degree, and later received a master’s in education from the University of Massachusetts Boston.

While at Simmons, she developed her love of visiting museums, often walking from school to the MFA and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Along with her substantial gifts to the MFA, Mrs. Lane was a benefactor of institutions including Simmons, the Gardner, the Worcester Art Museum, and the Boston Public Library.

The MFA and the library “were the places she escaped to and found peace,” Haas said.

After marrying Bill, Mrs. Lane encouraged him to expand his art collecting beyond modernist paintings and significantly into photography, which they explored together.

Her eye and tastes helped shape the couple’s holdings, and ultimately it was her decision to make the enormous 2012 donation to the MFA, where she was a visionary benefactor — a title that recognizes contributions beyond those of most donors.

By the time of that gift, she had long been a familiar face at galleries and museums, particularly at the MFA, where she was elected a trustee in 1987 and became an honorary trustee in 2008.

“She used to joke that she knew the loading docks of many museums better than she knew the front doors,” Haas said. “She greeted security guards and cleaning people by name.”

A private graveside service will be held for Mrs. Lane, who had no immediate survivors.

Always the young woman from Chelsea who had the good luck to become a collector of significant art, Mrs. Lane saw the donations she made with her husband, and later by herself, as part of her original schoolteacher calling.

“I felt like we were educators,” she told the Globe in 2012. “That helped me feel right at home.”

Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.

SEE IT: The Monacan Indian Nation hosts the first day of 30th Annual Powwow

Jun 3, 2023 By Admin in Native

AMHERST COUNTY, Va. (WSET) — Drums throbbed like heartbeats across the ring where dancers spun and swirled Saturday at the Monacan Indian Nation’s 30th Annual Powwow.

To a new onlooker, the dances may seem random and chaotic, but each style is an art: years of work and dedication spent mastering the intricate steps accompanying the rhythm of drums and singers.

For three decades the tribe has hosted the event in Central Virginia. The Monacan Indian

Nation, a federally recognized sovereign tribe, is headquartered in Amherst County, where nearby Bear Mountain overlooks the powwow site.

Although the Monacan Nation was certainly present at the powwow, Indigenous people from across the continent also participated in the event. The dance categories reflected the tribal diversity so that all Indigenous dancers could participate.

What each dancer wore in the ring depended on the kind of dance they were performing and what tribe each dancer is from. Some of the regalia were large and colorful with feathers and beads, while others wore more muted tones.

For the Jingle Dancers, small bell-like cones fastened to the ornate skirts release a rattling beat along with the drums. The regalia can weigh up to thirty extra pounds, so to pull off the graceful dance well is no small feat.

The dancers range across all ages, from small kids to elders. Many of the children took the opportunity to learn and practice during the powwow dances as the next generation of Indigenous dancers. Kaleigh Pollak said she was once one of the kids learning how to dance. Pollak grew up in the area and has been serving on the Powwow Committee along with her mom and grandmother since 2019, but she started dancing when she was just in middle school.

Although the ambiance of the event felt like a celebration, an undercurrent of sorrow ran through the gathering–a shadow often felt among Native communities.

The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement (MMIW) advocates for the disproportionate number of Indigenous women and girls who face violence and atrocities.

A special MMIW dance was held at the powwow to recognize the issue. Some of the participants wore regalia featuring a red handprint—the symbol that represents those who have not come home to their families.

MMIW is one of the many issues Pollak says can be represented at powwows. Although MMIW is something she said has not affected her own family directly, it’s an issue that needs to be in the conversation.

“I think it’s important to raise the awareness on different issues or traumas that the Native people have experienced since first contact, and MMIW is a big one,” she said.

MMIW was only one of the important acknowledgments of the day; simply the milestone 30th anniversary of the powwow was cause for celebration. One thing Pollak said was special about this year was the increased number of vendors who set up shop.

The event orbits around the dance ring, with a massive arc of vendor tents spread around the area. Visitors browsed the stalls, where Native artists offered jewelry, art, fur pelts, and a myriad of other items.

The location is ideal for the powwow–a blessing Pollak doesn’t overlook after the days when they had to rent a cowfield in Elon to hold the event.

“We would have to get out there a month prior and prep this cowfield in order for us to have powwow. So now that we have our own parcel of property, we can kind of set things up how we want,” she said.

Although the Monacan Indian Nation was on the land long before anyone else, it wasn’t until 2021 that the tribe was able to reclaim land of their own once more in Amherst County. That’s where the powwow has been held for the past two years.

Throughout the day, a large crowd was gathered around in camp chairs and makeshift hay bale seats to watch the dancing. For those attending a powwow for the first time, Pollak says the event should be approached from the perspective of respect and wanting to learn.

“It’s okay to ask questions,” she said. “Just be respectful in what you’re asking.”

She said the dancers are willing to talk to the public about what they wear and what it means to them and their people, but the key to that relationship is respect.

“Most tribes try to put on powwows to educate the general public about the Indigenous community that they inhabit and to raise awareness about things going on in their tribe or in Indian Country, like MMIW,” she said.

But she also said to come to have fun. There’s plenty of food, music, vendors and dancing–something for everyone.

If you missed the powwow on Saturday, the gates open again at 10 a.m. on Sunday for the second day of the Moncan Indian Nation’s 30th Annual Powwow. Visit their website HERE for more information.

How to Use ND Filters With Flash Photography for Portraits

Jun 3, 2023 By Admin in Photography

Can combining ND filters and a flash elevate your portrait images? Miguel Quiles takes us through this technique in depth and provides great advice on how you can make the most of this setup.

Shooting portraits in harsh daylight can be very challenging. In this video, Miguel Quiles first sets the tone by taking some natural light portraits without the ND filter and flash to show how this will look. With natural light, the background is very overexposed, so this is where a flash can be incorporated to light the model separately and expose for the background.

Quiles introduces a flash to the shoot, hoping for an improvement. However, the kicker in this situation is if you are not using high-speed sync, you can only shoot up to 1/200 s or 1/250 s with most cameras. The flash is set to its lowest setting, but still, the image comes out super bright, both the model and background are severely overexposed.

By adding an ND filter, this allows the photographer to control the elements more independently, and the first test shot shows a much more pleasing image compared to the prior image. However, there is still much more improvement needed, and this is where Quiles is able to adjust the flash, ND filter, and camera settings to optimize the situation.

Do you use ND filters in portrait photography when the light is very harsh, or do you have other tips? Let us know in the comments below.

SCULPTURE IN THE CITY ANNOUNCES ITS 12TH EDITION

Jun 3, 2023 By Admin in Sculpture

This summer, the 12th Edition of Sculpture in the City brings together 17 artists from 10 countries, whose artworks will be placed amongst the striking urban landscape that makes up the City of London’s Square Mile

Is Randy Johnson’s dead bird the most morbid photography logo ever?

Jun 3, 2023 By Admin in Photography

You may or may not see the funny side in Randy Johnson’s photography logo, but at least he remains somewhat on-brand in paying tribute to a famous past pitch that saw him accidentally launch a ball 100 miles per hour into the flight path of a dove.

Things may not have ended well for the white-feathered fowl, pretty much exploding into thin air during a Spring training game, but at least the 22 year old memory of the iconic moment is being kept alive through a questionable photography business logo that has the internet either in hysterics or a little bewildered.

• Take a look at some other unexpected famous photographers: 30 celebrities who also take pictures

In case you didn’t already know, we reported last year that Major League Baseball (MLB) legend Randy Johnson in fact has a double life as photographer. Following his retirement from professional baseball pitching, Johnson says he always had a passion for photography, and now has a very different career as a wildlife, travel, and concert photographer – with his own studio too.

MBL player Randy Johnson turned photographer — (Image credit: Gene Lower / Getty Images)

In more recent news, however, it seems social media has latched on to the humor in Johnson’s photography logo in what any MLB fans would instantly recognize as a direct reference to one of his earlier (and most famous) pitches in March 2001 which unexpectedly resulted in the death of a white dove bird.

The video below shows the incident taking place, as well as depicted in slow motion, and you can see the puff of feathers as the poor dove is decimated by a 100-mile-an-hour speedball pitched by Johnson at an unexpectedly coincidental time.

The logo for Johnson’s photography business is very clearly a reference to this 2001 event – although we would be super concerned if it wasn’t – but the irony of Johnson now being a wildlife photographer with a deceased animal as his logo might not be the best idea for attracting any clients to his business.

With that said, Johnson has been sporting this obscure dead bird logo for his business from as early as 2015 (maybe even earlier) after he retired from the MLB in 2010, so at least eight years have gone by without any uproars or animal activist giving Johnson a hard time over the logo, so maybe it’s more socially acceptable than we give him credit for.

What do you think of Johnson’s photography business logo? It’s certainly a standout. Is there any formula as to what actually works best in a photography logo: text or icons? Or maybe both? Your guess is as good as ours.

• You might also be interested in our guides to the best camera for sports photography, as well as the best telephoto lenses, plus the best budget telephoto lenses, and not forgetting the best cameras for wildlife photography.

On a bird quest: An anaesthetist turns avid bird photographer

Jun 3, 2023 By Admin in Photography

On a quiet Sunday morning, Deepthi Cheran sets out on a boat journey far away from her everyday hectic work schedule as an anaesthetist.

Over the next four to five hours, Dr. Deepthi along with local fisherman Logu scans the Pulicat lake, with camera in her hand, to capture the winged visitors — a pursuit that she has taken over the last six years.

An associate professor of anaesthesia in a government hospital in Chennai, Dr. Deepthi is a trained liver transplant anaesthetist and was part of the team that performed the first cadaveric liver transplant at the Government Stanley Medical College Hospital in 2009. Subsequently, she went on to be on the team for 33 liver transplants.

ArkLaTex Artistry: Debra Roberson; photographer, writer aims to remind people of history

Jun 3, 2023 By Admin in Photography

SHREVEPORT, La. (Ark-La-Tex Weekend) – Award-winning, critic-approved photographer shares her story and inspirations for her photography.

Debra Roberson is a photographer from Houston, Texas, but spent much of her childhood in Natchitoches, Louisiana, where her family is from. The two worlds were far apart in those days. As a Black girl, she faced racism and oppression.

Overcoming odds and criticism from fellow students and her teachers, who believed she did not deserve better, Roberson was awarded entry into an Ivy League school, Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire. This began her interest in photography. She learned French and eventually stayed in Europe, traveling some and photographing places in Spain, Italy, and Germany during the Carnival season.

After returning to the United States, Roberson ended up settling here in Shreveport, Louisiana. During her time here she had an extensive 30-year career working in information technology (IT) but then decided to make a change. Roberson returned to school at Bossier Parish Community College (BPCC) and there she rediscovered her interest and passion in the art of photography.

An in-depth look at Debra Roberson’s Photography:

Roberson’s subjects in her photography are nature, such as trees, birds, and flowers, but she also photographs historical buildings and places. Some of her most captivating work revolves around these photographs of historical places that have significance to Black history and the struggle Black people endured during the times of slavery.

Roberson’s parents and grandparents lived and worked on plantations growing up, inspiring her to document those places and remind the world of what happened.

An exploration of certain pieces of work by Debra Roberson and the reason why she captured the image.

“Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it,” Roberson says, living by this motto as an artist.

Her art’s raw truth is captured for the world to face. History is laid out in beautiful black-and-white images of these buildings and cotton fields, and the ghosts of the past cannot be avoided. Reminding any who sees her work, where we have been so we can know where we want to be as a society.

When asked what advice she would give someone interested in photography, Debra encourages all, “It’s never too late. If you are interested in photography, take a class, learn the fundamentals.”

To follow Debra Roberson and her photography, visit her site at https://www.debrarobersonartist.com/. See the full interview on News 12 Now app, Roku TV, Fire TV, and Apple TV apps.

The Marion Art Center is hiring!

Jun 3, 2023 By Admin in Art World News

Ponchatoula High freshman wins Congressman Scalise’s art competition

Jun 3, 2023 By Admin in Native

PONCHATOULA, La. (WVUE) – JLynne Hamberger’s oil pastel work “Louisiana Natives” was named Friday (June 2) as winner of the 2023 Congressional Art Competition for Louisiana’s First District, Rep. Steve Scalise’s office announced.

The Ponchatoula High School freshman’s artwork depicts animal and plant species native to Louisiana, including the brown pelican and magnolia flower. The painting will be displayed in the U.S. Capitol for one year, alongside the work of other winning artists from across the country.

“JLynne’s artwork truly captures the beauty of Louisiana’s natural landscape and wildlife,” House Majority Leader Scalise (R-Metairie) said in a statement. “The artwork creatively uses the state outline to frame our natural resources and I am proud it will soon be on display for the thousands of Capitol visitors from Louisiana and across the nation to view.”

A post by Ponchatoula High School said Hamberger “will travel to Washington D.C. to view her piece on exhibition in the Cannon Tunnel of the US Capitol building.”