Tequila is Cheaper than Therapy
Girls Just Wanna Have Recognition
MAKING MACHINAL: A Director’s Story
Stage Flight Circus Arts Soaring to New Heights
This is what you see as you enter Stage Flight Circus Arts Studio. This room is a reception area that leads to the gym itself.
The advanced performing group warms up and reviews choreography for their Jungle themed performance. This group consists of both advanced students and teachers.
Clint Bobzien contemplates how he is going to incorporate various tumbling routines into the Jungle performance. Clint is the the co-owner and head instructor along with his wife Hannah.
Clint Bobzien telling students Sarah Miller and Abby Smith that they are partners for the handstand on shoulders trick. Clint and Hannah opened this Studio three years ago and they have grown from having three students to 87 students.
Clint Bobzien stands on the mat as George Creek does a front tuck over him. Clint performed as an acrobat for 20 years and taught gymnastics for ten years prior to opening this studio.
Clint Bobzien watches as Teddy Barker does a double front tuck after jumping on the mini trampoline. Clint and Hannahs students range from age six to age 60 at the studio.
Hannah Bobzien talks to a group of aerial students about the Jungle routine they will be doing. Hannah has been involved in acrobatics and gymnastics since high school and has performed all over the world in various circus groups with her husband Clint.
Hannah Bobzien writes the different animals that the performers will be portraying in their jungle performance in May. Hannah. This is the second year that their studio has had a group that performs.
Instructor Teal Larsen helps keep the ring steady as Mandy Libs attempts to perform the “hanging bat”. Teal has been an instructor at Stage Flight Circus Arts for two years and has taught trapeze, aerial silks, aerial hoop, and stilt walking at various resorts and studios all over the country.
The advanced aerial silks groups attempts to figure out what they are going to do for the jungle performance. This is one of there groups that both Hannah Bobzien and Teal Larsen oversee.
The aerial silks group tries to look like a group of bugs stuck in a spiders webs as Nick Johnson stalks them on the ground as the “spider”. The jungle themed performance will take place at the Buskirk-Chumley theatre on May 25th.
Upon walking out of the studio there is a sign to remind students to be open and creative because it is worth it. Both Clint and Hannah emphasize how they don’t want their students, no matter what age or skill level to feel as though they need to hold back or that they aren’t good enough.
Midwest Threads
Axis Apparel signage overlooking the production floor. This is Axis Apparel’s largest production space yet, providing enough space for another press to be added in the future.
Axis Apparel owner, Logan Keith, hanging out at company’s factory space. The Indiana University graduate started the printing and design business in 2011 and has been keeping busy ever since.
Founder of Axis Apparel, Logan Keith, and full-time employee Austin Vuke, play a quick round of ping pong before getting started on the day’s job. Keith enjoys a laidback work atmosphere, balancing fun with productivity.
The Axis Apparel office spaces overlook the production space.
Founder of Axis Apparel, Logan Keith, aligns transparencies of a client’s design on the lightbox. The transparencies are then burned into a screen covered in emulsion. This is one of the first steps of the screen production process.
Founder of Axis Apparel, Logan Keith, power washes the emulsion on the screen, revealing the design that can then be printed onto clothing. Logan’s screen printing experience is credited partially to his father, who is a screen printer in Spencer, Indiana.
Full-time Axis employee, Josh B., applies more ink to the screen so the press can imprint a solid layer.
Founder of Axis Apparel, Logan Keith, and full-time employee Austin Vuke, talk amongst themselves while the press is printing.
The design being printed for local tattoo shop, Time and Tide Tattoo, is set up on the press, having just been ran with a layer of white ink. Axis Apparel prints merchandise for both local and nationally recognized organizations.
A batch of shirts rolls through the dryer.
Founder of Axis Apparel, Logan Keith, and two full-time employees, Austin Vuke and Josh B. check the quality of the first shirt through the dryer for the day’s job. Since Axis’ inception, Logan has afforded to bring on full-time production employees to be part of the Axis team.
A table is set out with Axis Apparel stickers, business cards and other miscellaneous merchandise.
The Last Song
Camera and sound crews set up as they prepare for the nights event. A live stream was displayed in Franklin Hall for the entirety of the piano’s burning.
Ross Martinie Eiler plays a song on the defunct piano before it is set ablaze. Ross has been playing piano for twenty years and is a piano technician at Indiana University.
The piano awaits its fate on the evening Wednesday, February 7th, 2018. It is somewhat functional, but there are parts that are beyond repair. Certain keys on the piano cannot be played and internal parts do not function.
Annea Lockwood, the composer, uses lighter fluid to help start the fire. This is the second time Lockwood has set fire to a piano for a musical performance.
Ross Martinie Eiler laughs with Annea Lockwood as he plays a last few notes on the now burning piano. Eiler was invited to the event to play the piano before it was set on fire.
The piano is completely engulfed in flames. Three hours was allotted for the performance time, with a reception in Franklin Hall planned afterwards.
Joan Hawkins, an organizer of the Wounded Galaxies symposium, watches as the piano starts to burn. The Wounded Galaxies is a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of 1968, which was a time of international political revolution.
The piano’s internal strings become visible as the outside structure burns away. As the piano is consumed by fire, the strings pop and crackle, making the music Annea Lockwood planned for the performance.
Annea Lockwood watches from the crowd with satisfaction as the piano burns. As a composer, Lockwood says the noise that the piano makes as it burns is the music of the performance.
A crowd gathers in Dunn Meadow as the piano burns into the night. Piano Burning was a public performance held as part of the Wounded Galaxies festival and symposium.
After a little over two hours of steadily burning on a sand pile, the piano finally collapses onto the ground. According to Lockwood, who has burned pianos before, this time frame is standard.
MAKING MACHINAL: AN IU DIRECTOR’S STORY
James tests out the avant-garde set of his production, Machinal, in the Wells-Metz Theatre during rehearsal. James Nelson began his directing career with an English-speaking theatre group in Germany and has been an IU director and instructor since 2016.
James rounds up his actors for a briefing before rehearsal in the Wells-Metz Theatre. Directing a play about female oppression, James approaches every Machinal rehearsal with humility and a collaborative spirit.
James plays with the string décor before rehearsal on the set of his production, Machinal. The strings symbolize the theme of imprisonment in a woman’s world.
James and actor Felix Merback examine the string dinner table prop before rolling it on the set of Machinal. James has collaborated with his design team to represent societal imprisonment through strings and black-and-white angles.
James arranges his actors on set in the Wells-Metz Theatre for rehearsal of Episode One, the Prison of Automation. Machinal is structured around nine episodes of Young Woman’s life, with each episode representing a socially-constructed “prison” of femininity.
Actress Kaleigh Howland screams with exasperation in her role in Episode One as an overworked employee of the male corporate world. Machinal depicts nine prisons of the female experience, with Episode One symbolizing the Prison of Automation in a male work-centric society.
Actress Abby Lee and actor Joshua M. Smith rehearse a speakeasy scene on set in the Wells-Metz Theatre as Young Woman and her love interest. Their romance represents one of nine prisons of the female experience: the Prison of False Hope.
Young Woman, played by Abby Lee, awaits her punishment during rehearsal of a court scene. Machinal is an expressionist play that portrays the world to audiences through Young Woman’s eyes: a colorless, angular world of imprisonment.
James converses with actress Abby Lee during rehearsal of the final scene in the Wells-Metz Theatre. James always listens to his actors’ insights in the rehearsal room and incorporates them onto the stage.
Stage lights are the finishing touch to the perfect play in the Wells-Metz Theatre. Machinal takes the stage on February 23rd with final performances on March 3rd.
Actors Connor Starks, Caleb Curtis, and Nathaniel Kohlmeier portray the oppressive law enforcers that stifle Young Woman’s voice in Episode Eight, the Prison of the Word. Machinal addresses female marginalization in all areas of society: work, home, socializing, and even the court of law.
James watches the final run-through of Machinal in the Wells-Metz Theatre at the end of rehearsal. Throughout his experience directing this production, James has learned the importance of listening to other voices.
Flaming Keys
A broken piano sits in the sun in Dunn Meadow on February 7, 2018. The piano was there all day, but the piano burning event didn’t start until 5:30.
The hammers rise and fall as someone plays the piano in Dunn Meadow on Wednesday. Most of the keys still worked, but the piano was broken beyond repair.
Pianist Ross Martinie Eiler laughs as he improvises a song on the piano before the event starts. Onlookers were invited to sit down and play if they would like.
Ross Martinie Eiler, an experienced pianist, continues to entertain the crowd by improvising a piece before the piano is burned. The burning was expected to take about three hours, and it was around 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
Annea Lockwood addresses the crowd before the piano is burned. Lockwood has been creating art with broken pianos since 1968.
Annea Lockwood and Jon Vickers, IU Cinema founding director, light the piano on fire using lighter fluid, newspaper, and a lighter. Lockwood began recording the sounds of burning pianos in an attempt to record what fire sounded like.
Eiler plays “Great Balls of Fire” on the piano as it burns. Another crowd member improvised a song as the piano was on fire, but both pianists were pulled away before it became too dangerous.
Smoke quickly rises from the flaming piano in Dunn Meadow on February 7th. A live stream of the event was being shown on the big screen in Franklin Hall for those who couldn’t stand the cold.
Flames lap at the keys of the piano about half an hour into the event. Annea Lockwood overstrings the strings of the pianos she burns so that they will snap when the flames reach them.
The strings of the piano are revealed after the flames destroy the wooden back. Poems from 1968 were recited by members of the Writer’s Guild of Bloomington as the flames roared.
The fire grows as the entire piano is consumed by flames. The event was expected to take three hours but actually went much quicker.
The bench and the piano both collapse into a pile of flames and embers after burning for a little over an hour. The crowd had dwindled greatly from the beginning, but overall the event was a success.
A New Kind of Tattoo Parlor
Artists at this downtown Greenwood tattoo shop are paving the way to a new standard for tattoo shops.
Momma Hansen Photography
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The hashtag "Momma Hansen Photography" is well known around the North High School Community of Evansville Indiana and is continuously expanding. Kristy Hansen, … Continue Reading ››