Category — On Location/Columbus

Candice Watkins

Candye Kane, 2009

Building the Cultural Bridge

Candice Watkins

ragazine.cc: As an organizer of the annual Comfest Street Fair, among numerous other items listed on your resume in the About Candice Watkins graf in your blog, you’ve done about everything and anything a person can to promote the arts in and around Columbus. What motivates you to participate?

CW: There is an inner need to work toward a better world, a place where people of all kinds are equal and talent is nurtured so everyone can be the best they can be. The arts and humanities have been venues for me as they translate well to community work and bridge cultural and economic gaps allowing for public opportunity to participate in sometimes heretofore unaccessible activities.

rag: You’re a visual artist engaged in neon and other light studies, but you’re also a musician and photographer. What’s your ‘favorite medium’?  The one that puts you in the driver’s seat of expression?

Roger Wilson, The Majestics, High Beck Tavern, Columbus, Ohio, 2008

CW: I enjoy being flexible, working in light is like working in photography so if I had to choose it would be both neon and photography. Both are the result of manipulation of light. Thought I also really enjoy event production, in that it allows me to share a vision with thousands of people at a time.

rag: You take a lot of photographs of musicians …

CW: I am a music historian or what is sometimes called an ethnomusicologist, as well as a collector of historical photos and documentation for mid-western artists. I continue to document performances myself and have a collection ranging from the 1960s through 2010.

rag: Is this a special subject for you, or one of many?

CW: I also shoot a lot of beaches and flowers – favorites for me. Check out my myspace.com/jazzneonfestivals4u and facebook albums.

rag: If you could sit down for a couple of mojitos with any musician at all, who would it be, and why?

CW: I  would like to drink with Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Art Tatum – both favorites of mine that I did not get to meet. Of course, I did get to hang with many folks who are gone but whom I loved, like Royal “Rusty” Bryant, Hank Marr, Jimmie McGriff and Frank Foster, and still do hang with Gene Walker, Sean Carney, Bobby Floyd, Derek Dicenzo and Shaunt Booker, among many, many more I am blessed to know.

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A recording done at Jazz & Eggs Jam Sessions, The River Club, Columbus, Ohio, in 1998, titled “Jam For Jitney” in honor of Candice Watkins’ father, Jitney, who had just passed away. The piece was a small part of the Jam’s ongoing music that day. Based in Horace Silver’s “Song for Our Fathers”, it sailed on for more than half an hour.

“Jam For Jitney”

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ABOVE: Derek DiCenzo, top, at the Rahsaan Roland Kirk Scholarship Fundraiser in 2008, in Columbus. Sean Carney, bottom left, of the Sean Carney Band, winner of the International Blues Alliance award in 2008. Taken at Blues for a Cure. Danielle Schnebelen, lower right, of Trampled Under Foot, at the 2009 Blues for a Cure concert in Columbus.

Willie Pooch Johnson 2008

Marcie Vaughn 2010

Harold Smith, The Lobby, Columbus, Ohio 2009

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Comfest Street Fair:
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, June 25, 26, & 27, 2010

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Watkins, with her ”time travel buddies”, is the author of a book from Arcadia Press titled “Columbus: The Musical Crossroads”.  The premise is that travel in the early to mid-20th Century was overland; the national road and major train lines went thru Columbus, and the music did too. “It was a major player,  just like those cities that have capitalized on it more.” The book is available online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target and other booksellers.

Candice Watkins can be reach at comfeststfair2@cs.com.

the American weigh … 

Penny Scale detail

With Charlie Einhorn

My eccentric friend Chris Steele is an artist, designer, model maker, inventor of of odd contraptions, spin-art virtuoso, founder of Citizens for a Better Skyline (pioneering the first murals to appear in the Short North), photographer, ceramist, and accumulator of assorted weird stuff. I first met him in 1972 when we opened Benchworks, a fine crafts collective in German Village. He brought an enormous old penny scale he had rescued from the then recent demolition of old Central Station. I agreed to let him place it at the entrance of our store and he came around regularly to collect his coins. The many scales he has kept on collecting throughout these past 4 decades now make part of the largest private collections of these once ubiquitous marvelous objects, sought by museums, history buffs and collectors all over the world. Find out how you can see that amazing collection by reading below.  

The American Weigh: Christopher Steele Collection
The Ohio State University Urban Arts Space
50 W. Town St., Columbus, Ohio 43215
Phone:    614-292-8861   614-292-8861
Show opens February 2 – closes March 7, 2010
Reception: Friday February 26, 2010 5-7pm
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday: 11 am to 6 pm
Thursday: 11 am to 8pm
Free Admission 

Snapshots

Welcome to the show ...

Scaling up an exhibition

How much do you weigh?

Chris & guest, neon artist Candice Watkins

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DAVE POWERS

Dave and partner Annette started a series of house concerts on Sundays this past summer, and the word spread. The house is now packed for these informal gatherings, and local musicians frequently sit in to jam, some of which has been recorded.

Dave Powers, is a friend, a piano player who played at my wedding, a monster talent, musical genius, with a photographic memory full of encyclopedic knowledge and facts, and the largest collection of recorded music in his possession, primarily jazz, but just as exensive in classical and more. Since there is no tune or riff that he has heard that he can’t remember, his improvisations are amazing and often fun in the wry way he incorporates that into his playing. So, yes, I love listening to Dave play and hope many others get to enjoy it.  — Charlie

Annette & Dave