Jamie Downs, Visual Artist

Gloria Kirk shot this while I was talking to Sharon Farmer at her wonderful show, Proactive Women, at the Sewall Belmont House and Museum, 144 Constitution Ave, NE . The show took me back to my photojournalist head, though, central Pennsylvania and suburban Philadelphia are certainly different from Washington DC, let alone the Whitehouse. Her eye is fantastic and she is particularly sensitive to hands. The hands tell the story in almost all of her photos. Sharon is a warm and open person, and that warmth is evident in her subject matter… the humor of private moments in the Whitehouse…women in the midst of passionate political action…average Americans gathering for patriotic celebrations….

I hope you get a chance to check out the show. You can always see her work on line. Just google her name - there are lots of links.

We spent the last few days with Lynn Harriton. She brought an actual copy of the earliest catalog so I will be updating the photos soon. The old zeroxed images were so bad….

Also we found some new leads and images. We could not find an image on the web of the glass with fishes made famous in The Godfather…”Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes”… Looking for it was enough to give me nightmares of my own final season of The Sopranos.

This is a big project…looking for information and collecting images, and then boiling it down and putting it on a site that is worthy of the Harriton aesthetic.

If anyone has ideas, links, images of suggestions, they are certainly welcome.

Howard L . Chaney created this design for Harriton Carved Glass. It was to be at National Airport, but was not executed. The piece is gouache on board, 18.5 x 30 and done in 1940. It is a beauty isn’t it?

Sharon Farmer, official White House photographer for the Clinton administration, will open her show, “Pro-Active Women”  this evening, February 19, 2008 from 6:30 - 8:30 at the Sewall Belmont House and Museum, 144 Constitution Ave, NE, next to the Hart Administration Building. The show “is a declarative statement on the politics, creativity, evolution, and persistence of women to make a better world.” You can view the exhibit during museum hours through May 31, 2008

The building is amazing and a suitable environment for Sharon’s work. 

you have to check out Stirling’s new magazine which he puts together with his friend Ben Wyskida in their spare time between their jobs and of course the one year old.

Stirling McLaughlin - Creative Director
Stirling McLaughlin is an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator in New York City. Stirling has a baby girl named Nika Bean, and a wife named Dawn. When he was in college, they put him on TV because he wore a mask and yelled at people. Recently he has been working on a reality show about himself that will be starting… any day now.

Ben Wyskida - Editor in Chief
Ben Wyskida is a writer, activist, conscientious hedonist and political communications strategist living in Brooklyn. Formerly a co-conspirator at Philadelphia’s design firm for the people, Design for Social Impact, and then the Communications Director at Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Ben is now Publicity Director for the Nation Magazine. Ben’s work has been published in Mother Jones, Yes Magazine, Fret Magazine and others. Ben has a remarkable gift for writing in the third person only when appropriate. -

This is my favorite post to their magazine lately.

You could take this two ways right?

Here is some of my new work. I’m having a lot of fun with mixed media and paper. I’m thinking of embedding these in Envirotec . I haven’t decided yet.

Check out Eleanor Clarkson’s work on our other site www.thedigitalfolklife.org. It’s on the Peace page - a show in Stroudsburg, PA just before the war started. Eleanor is a master of Envirotec

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At some point in the near future,  (I DID IT. CHECK OUT THE PAGE LINK ABOVE. THE BOOK- “ARTS AND SOCIAL SERVICES: SEVEN YEARS IN THE LIFE OF A FAMILY OF ARTISTS” IS POSTED. I STILL NEED TO UPLOAD A COUPLE OF THE CHARTS )I will be adding information about the art center that I ran for ten years called A Family of Artists. A Family of Artists was an all purpose art center and 501c3 Arts Service Organization. Though we had gallery shows, general art classes of all kinds, a gift shop, and even a teen night club called The Gate, A Family of Artists and its sister organization, A Family of Artists: The Works, were known, primarily, for their summer camps, after school programs and arts alternative school, mainstreaming at risk kids, sent from social service agencies and psychiatrists and employing 28 staff members, mostly artists, paid by Medicaid funds - a first I’m told. At its height, A Family of Artists: The Works was housed in a 10,000 sq ft warehouse building with a gallery, ceramics and woodworking studio, computer art and computer music labs, a writing lab and library, visual arts studios, photography and papermaking studios, metal sculpture studio and more. The programs were highly multicultural and children sent from agencies could remain annonomous, being, in most cases, indistinguishable from children attending from the general public. This program was a major success, financially (at the end, bringing in 18,000/week in service fees until funds were cut), but more importantly, a success for families and participants who were overwhelmingly pleased with the program, until it was surprisingly defunded by medicaid cuts in 1996 - though the arts alternative school remained until 1997. There are many hours of videotape and many written accounts already available and some will be posted as an educational tool. A book, The Arts and Social Service: Seven Years in the History of A Family of Artists was published in 1994 by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania and it will be available on line along with updates detailing the final three years. This book tells the story of the beginnings of A Family of Artists when it was a labor of love, funded by The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Talbot Hall Foundation of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem, PA., The Deutsh Institute and mostly by Pennsylvania Developmental Disabilities Planning Council.

A Family of Artists and A Family of Artists: The Works were social service providers and experienced stunning success. They were extremely rewarding for the remarkable artists who gave themselves to this endeavor and life saving for numerous children. These programs could serve as a model for others who wish to use the arts to reach at risk children through the arts. I look forward to offering here as much information as possible to help others pursue this rewarding adventure in their own communities. I will post testimonies from many of those who were touched by this amazing organization and encourage anyone with first hand knowledge, who happens upon this site, to join in. For now you can find a short video at http:/abstractart.hypermart.net

Click on arts administration.