Foto Frontera at the La Fe Cultural and Technology Center

Exhibition Link on Wix

If you are in town from Thursday, September 6 to October 26, 2018, please stop in to see all the wonderful photographers' works which will be on display along with my dad's images.

For the event, I chose to create a new website for my dad's images using Wix. Every semester, I teach a First Year Composition course that includes an ePortfolio or Advocacy Website assignment. This allows me to remain relatively current with the various free services students can use to create their websites. Because of this practice, I decided to create a photography exhibition / portfolio for my dad's photographs that will be exhibited in September at the La Fe Cultural and Technology Center.

I like the idea of being able to connect from one service to another while adding content here, and chose Wix because it lets the designer create finely arranged pages, and provides several basic templates from which to choose. Weebly is very good too and I've created sites with it. It is very good for students that have little or no web design and authoring experience. However, Wix seems best for portfolio and gallery type sites. 

11-11-11

Originally posted in Heather Champ's ancient (ca. 2001) Mirror Project  (via waybackmachine.org), I offer this for 11-11-11, Veteran's Day. Thanks again to Heather for the project and permission to upload this image. Originally, the project was aimed at people taking their own pictures in a mirror. This posthumous image was one of two that I know were published on the website.


Stanley E. Drapes

Among the large collection of family photographs, is this one taken by my late father-in-law, Stanley E. Drapes. We have hundreds of photos dating from 1935, but this photo is one of our favorites.

The look on his face and the light from the window helps create a ghostly quality to the image. It helps show the apprehension of being young and in the service.

It is likely this picture was taken in 1940 in his hometown of Stevens Point, Wisconsin. He placed the camera on his wife's, Lucille's, dressing table to steady it.

At the time, he was in Battery "D", 120th Field Artillery, 32nd Division, of the Wisconsin National Guard. The photograph was taken before he was sent to Louisiana for training.

Amusingly, his son Michael, dates pictures of his dad by the amount of hair he had. "This is a very unusual picture for me, as I only knew my dad as bald. In most of the pictures of him when he did have hair, he was wearing a hat." 

Stanley retired from the service in the 1960 and went on to work at White Sands Missile Range, settling the family permanently in El Paso, Texas. In 1991, he and Lucille celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary along with their four children, their spouses, six grandchildren and many friends. He passed away a little over two years later.

Mobile Post :: Prada Marfa reflections with child

The Judge at Prada Marfa the weekend after being vandalized following its public installation ceremonies, October 30, 2005.

Ephemeral Christmas gifts

trying them on for size
Originally uploaded by chacal la chaise.

Every year, MJ's aunt, who lives in the Milwaukee area, sends a cache of old family photos along with her Christmas greeting. Each time she writes, in her elegant Palmer method hand, “You probably have these already, but I'm sending them to you just in case.” While we have many images that his mother and father left, we usually haven’t seen the ones she returns.

These little gifts are true Christmas surprises--full of fun and memories. What more can you ask from a gift? In fact, who says a gift must always be glamorous, practical, or costly? These small pieces of paper cost nothing, yet each is embedded with its own small story that money cannot buy.

chrismas window
Originally uploaded by chacal la chaise.

Their effect looms large our minds as we remember holidays when we were four or five years old. We remember long forgotten memories of stenciled window panes, tinseled pine needles, and frosted breaths in December air. All float to the top of our consciousness, and only then do we realize another year has flown, and the holidays are here once again. What memories are we creating this year? How will we send memories to the young? Are these URLs we create the future Christmas card memories for others? Only time will tell.