Showing posts with label ZINE_News_and_Notes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ZINE_News_and_Notes. Show all posts
With three locations to date, Fig & Olive is a distinctive yet cozy restaurant with a Mediterranean flair. In Washington, DC, they are part of CityCenter DC, a luxury downtown complex.
In addition to great food, an impromptu Friday bunch on this day at Annie's Paramount Steakhouse in Washington, DC was highlighted by this colorful rainbow-like display of Christmas ornaments and ribbons.
Images from Pantone
This week Pantone, the company known as the global color authority, announced their Color of the Year, and that color is Mocha Mousse.
Specifically for those of us interested in graphic design, the color is PANTONE 17-1230, described as "a warming rich brown hue" that "nurtures with its suggestion of the delectable quality of cacao, chocolate and coffee, appealing to our desire for comfort.
LGBT Pride celebrations were cancelled or altered all over the world this month, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, I have plenty of proud memories to sustain me, because in 2019 I was in New York City for World Pride, which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the infamous Stonewall Riots, and I have very special memories of being there a year ago this weekend.
In addition to my memories, I also have this video! See rainbow flags in Midtown Manhattan, plus fun and information from related exhibits at the New York Public Library and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, all honoring individuality and freedom of expression... Then, of course, there were the parades: the annual Dyke March, last year’s new anti-commercial Queer Liberation March, and the traditionally colorful and often flamboyant Gay Pride Parade.
The anti-police messaging displayed and chanted during the 2019 parades are even more poignant this year, as the murders of George Floyd and other African-Americans restrained to death have bought police brutality and injustice to the forefront of the news, and so many more minds in 2020.
What is now known as the Stonewall Riots began in the early hours of June 28, 1969. New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village. As patrons and employees were pulled from the bar by police, they and neighborhood residents decided to fight back, leading to six days of rioting and demonstrations that began the modern LGBT civil rights movement.
See below for video and for additional photos.
Gay Pride March
LGBT Pride Flags at Rockefeller Center in June 2019
Message on display at St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue
New York Public Library (above); and (below) exhibitions on LGBT and Walt Whitman
Dyke March (above and below)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Camp exhibition (above and below)
I am proud to be one of the first BOPA board members to support this effort, and I was honored to be a part of the local awards ceremony in March at Baltimore Center Stage. Maryland students were awarded Gold Key, Silver Key and Honorable Mentions for their visual art or writing submission. Also, "American Voices" and American Visions" nominees were announced as the strongest regional works. Honored writings were read, and honored visual art was displayed. Gold Keys are automatically forwarded for consideration at the national level. Among the honors are opportunities for recognition, exhibition, publication, and scholarships.
Keynote Speakers were BOPA CEO Donna Drew Sawyer and filmmaker, curator and video essayist Kirk Shannon-Butts, who serves as curator for City Hall, City of Baltimore, and a member of the Baltimore Public Art Commission.
Nationwide, students submitted nearly 340,000 original works this year. The awards program is a venerated program, dating back to 1923. Past recipients include visual artists Andy Warhol, Hughie Lee-Smith, Paul Chan and Ken Burns, as well as writers Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote and Joyce Carol Oates.
Photo (provided by BOPA): In the front row (left to right) me, BOPA CEO Donna Sawyer and Past Board Chair Tom Crawford.
PHOTO GALLERY: My annual visit to the American Craft Show in Baltimore is always a treat. See below for my set of random onsite photos.
A few months ago I was in the middle of my most important, and ultimately most enjoyable, multimedia project to date. This was the creation of four instructional videos for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), during the final months of my assignment with the CMS Office of Information Technology (OIT) through my employer, government contractor SeKON.
In my role as a Senior Communications Specialist and editor of the OIT newsletter at CMS, I had become familiar with Section 508, the federal government law that mandates the accessibility of documents and media to people with disabilities. However, to work directly with the CMS Section 508 Team (seen below, leading a training session for employees), was an unexpected pleasure. These are the the people behind the oversight of 508 standards throughout CMS, and they required a series of videos to better instruct employees and contractors about the need for and the requirements of accessibility.
The project involved meeting with the Section 508 team, writing and reviewing the script, creating the whiteboard animation, and recording the voiceovers. (CMS maintains its own professional video and audio studios, but for this project, because of the short deadline and to help expedite the process, I handled the one-on-one work with the Section 508 Team and created the animation myself, so I relied on the CMS for only their audio recording and editing services.)
You can see and hear (and read, through closed captioning) these productions on the CMS YouTube Channel:
By the way... the CMS audio team liked working with me so much that they asked me to provide the voiceover for an early version of one of their productions for MLN Telehealth Services.
Montage of images at the top of this page includes actual screen shots from the white board animation, plus a stock photo of a microphone and facilities similar to those at CMS.
Actress Karolyn Grimes, known as Zuzu Bailey from the classic Christmas movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”, autographed a photo for me this past weekend at the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention In Baltimore. She was just as sweet a the character she played when she was the six-year-old Zuzu. It was a pleasure to meet her. I told her that I often see the benefit showing of her famous movie at Baltimore's historic Senator Theatre, and she remembered being honored there during the 50th anniversary of the film.
Below, file photo of me and Paul Kilmon seated outside the Senator Theatre, near Karolyn Grimes' signature in cement, after seeing the movie.
Part architecture, part sculpture, part tourist attraction (and part “gaudy” spectacle, according to a New York Times review), Vessel is a new New York landmark in the city’s Hudson Yards development. Designed by British designer Thomas Heatherwick, the 16-story structure opened in March and has 2,500 steps (and an elevator) for a truly immersive art experience.
Passed by this sculpture and monument in Madison Square Park, on my way to brunch on a rainy Friday.
The sculpture is Forward, "a full-bodied hand-carved wooden figure, that grounds the monument area. She sits on the steps below the bronze statue of Admiral Farragut..."
The artist is Arlene Shechet, whose Full Steam Ahead exhibition was held in the park from September 25, 2018 to April 28, 2019 thanks to the Madison Square Park Conservancy.
Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device
As part of the SeKON team working for the Office of Information Technology (OIT) leadership at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), I attended Convergence 2018, the fourth annual conference for the IT community at CMS. I have been serving as the Senior Communications Specialist on the project since October 2017.
Pictured: (Above, l to r) SeKON's Dr. Dayo Oyeleye, OIT Deputy Director George Hoffman, SeKON Chief Operating Officer Alison Rosen and me. SeKON Client Relationship Manager Brian Pariroo (below), the person who recruited me to the company, welcomes conference attendees to the breakfast hosted by SeKON.
(Still in beta mode... Please pardon the construction mess!) This digital magazine is a scrapbook of news, articles, images and other noteworthy information from the files of Brian Davis Lyles, a writer and creative consultant with talents in the literary, visual and performing arts, and more...
