Washington DC's preeminent accordionist, Merv Conn died on December 20. I called him more than a decade ago when I was living with my Nana and Pop in Alexandria. I was trying to figure out the best way to go about learning the instrument and would call accordionists listed in  phone books in any city I visited. I think we must have spoken for 15-20 minutes, he gave me tips and told me about his own experiences in hopes that I might become one of his students.

I never did take a lesson from him, but years later when I heard that Jeff Krulik had made a documentary about him Kim and I went with Todd and Kristen to Silver Spring in the hope of seeing it. Alas, that screening was sold out (we saw Merv in lobby playing to his fans), but we did get to finally see it during the 2007 James River Film Festival. It's a great portrait of a beautiful person. 



 

POSTHUMOUS - Opens at American Univ. Museum - Sat., May 8, 6-8pm

POSTHUMOUS Michael Lease

May 8 - June 6, 2010
Opening: Saturday, May 8 6-8 pm

American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20016
www.american.edu\museum
202-885-1300

Hours: 11am-4pm Tuesday-Sunday

Image: Rachel (detail), 2005, color thermal print, pencil, Sharpie, wheat, water, 11x14 in.

From the curator:

Employing personal and collected snapshots, Michael Lease’s work encourages viewers to consider the cultural use of photographs. For the project Posthumous, first mounted in 2005, Lease uses his own images and recollections, turning a quasi-anthropological eye onto his own past.

Through the combination of snapshots and texts, Posthumous distills years’ worth of intimate moments between Lease, various friends, and lovers. Wheat-pasted directly to the gallery walls and coupled with hand-written vignettes, the intimate yet familiar images belie a mountain of experience beyond the frame. Simultaneously personal and universal, Posthumous asks viewers to reflect on their own pictures, weighing the similarities of these stories against their own.

Like the obituaries, public memorials, and remembrance walls that Lease credits as inspiration for the work, the gallery is used as a space in which a story about the past can be told. By inserting private images into a public space, Lease pays homage to the people that shaped him and reminds us that, no matter how we tuck them away (in boxes beneath the bed or buried on a hard drive), photographs play a pivotal role in structuring our histories


Allison Peck, Curator

For the Lack Of Words, 14th and T Streets NW DC

Well, at least not my words...

From the Washington Post (click to enlarge)