The Underground July - August 2009

I took a B/W DMACC - Ankeny photo class. It was mostly middle aged women and the instructor told me I could not develop my "bimbo" photos. Bob Schulte, an occasional art Grandview College instructor, invited me to develop B/W film for the State Fair photo contest. I keep going back. At some point another instructor noticed I was not a student and told me to come only when he was there. I might have used B/W into late 2002 or early 2003 as I have a photos of B/W Todd G 2003 license plate. This is just a sample of the B/W era.

I am a hobbiest not a great artist. This web page just shows me what I was up to. I have to look at an image in order to draw it. I don't know if including the original here is interesting or distracting. I threw out a bunch of art in the late 1990s at Mary E's house and then again at Eric W's house in about 2003. This page includes items found on other pages but is here too to fill creative timeline gaps.

Every year, Eastsiders make money parking cars in their yards during the 10 day state fair. I am an East sider who loves the fairgrounds.

A St. Louis radio station ran a "Pop Art for Pop Mart" contest for U2 tickets. I submitted several items in a see through poster holder. I won tickets and took my then girlfriend to the show. I threw away all of the art entries. I recreated two of the submissions at the bottom of the page. One was a drawing of Max Beckman's woodcut portrait. Maybe I thought they would think it was Bono. I also created a monkey to man thing from U2's own designers. Take a look at the videos of the show from Mexico. The opening is similar to a prize fighter entering the ring.

This might have been a fashion photography class held in a few sessions and coincided with the Andy Warhol and Des Moines-born fashion designer Halson which ran from Sept 19, 2014 - Jan 18, 2015. A few models were brought in. I once thought the US sucked and now I think it is great. Sorry for the offending photos. Ben Easter talked about his photography experience.

I ran the wide camera in a two camera Ultimate Elvis rehearsal shoot. This video is a place holder until I get a better example put together. The tour is in celebration of Elvis Presley’s 75th birthday and four performers will depict four different eras of Elvis: The 1950’s, 1960’s, during his movie career and his concert career with the Vegas Singers. The performers – Bill Cherry, Kevin Mills, Leo Days, and Victor Trevino, Jr. – were selected after being finalists in the Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist competition. The national tour will begin in Ames and continue on to 25 more cities.

Christ Crucified is a 1632 painting by Diego Velázquez depicting the Crucifixion of Jesus. A billboard based on this painting was moved around Des Moines for at least three years. I photographed it in different weather, locations, and with scenes I created.

I was a traffic control production assistant for one day in the Drake area on University Avenue. I don't recall doing much.