Sat 07.12.08 – Painter Ryan Callis and Poet Chris Davidson decided nearly a year ago to start an art / writing / music salon every two months in Seal Beach as a way to lure the Silverlake hipsters out of their lairs and out into the big wide world of SoCal.
The Salon has been quite successful with 30-50 attendees (mostly artists and writers) the second Saturday of the odd numbered month. I went last time (May) and had a good time listening to folks present their work and talking with other attendees of the artistic and writerly persuasions.
Ryan approached me about presenting some of my work at this month’s Salon two weeks ago with the statement that the web has been under represented so far. I decided that I would promote all things web / mobile and photography by showing some of my India photos from the Urbanista Diaries adventure.
The other presenters were: Los Angeles painters Liz Carney and Feo Voronov, who displayed and spoke about their paintings (Photo of Liz Carney above with one of Feo’s paintings on the wall next to her). Poet Patty Seyburn read from four of her poems. And Summer Darling played an acoustic set.
The constraint for the evening was that I had to show my work, describe my process and be done in 10-15 minutes.
Thus, I decided that I would actually present on a dual set of subjects: One being the adventure and process of geo-mobile-photo-blogging with the Nokia N82 on the Urbanista project and the other being the phenomenon of photowalking and making friends through Flickr groups. How would I cover so much ground and images in 15 mintues?
I distilled my presentation down to the bare minimum facts on mobile photo blogging and then specifically talked about the 4th Chennai Photowalk. I took all the photos that I took from the Chennai Photowalk and put them in a slideshow that played while I spoke on the Nokia Urbanista event and on the Chennai Photowalk folks. It was great fun and the audience liked not just the Chennai photos but also the whole idea of photowalking.
All in all, Salon #5 was delightful.
Ah! Thank you again!
Hi Chandru,
Y’all got something very special going on in Chennai with the photowalks and poetry events. I certainly was going to use my 15 minutes in front of 40 plus artists & writers to let them know what other artists and writers are up to.
smiles, jen ;o)
Thanks a bunch for inviting me, Jen. I had a blast! I hope next one will be in cooler weather.
P.S. I wish our band could jam at one of these, but we’re a little…heavy. 🙂
Hi Bryan,
Acoustic, perhaps? Heavy can be very good when done without amplification.
Actually, I raved up your photography to Ryan for the next Salon…
;o)