Becreativebarcamp
Becreativebarcamp is underway at the berkshire museum and the presentations are going great! this barcamp is clearly off to a great start as the speakers are well prepared and we’ve nailed down the format. Here is Douglas Neiner from pixelgraphics presenting on designing for the web. Still time to get here and catch the next few presentations.
Sent from my iPhone
Art Flows in Cultural Pittsfield – Yankee Magazine
Nice article in Yankee Magazine blogsite about the Jump In! art show at the Lichtenstein in Pittsfield, opening Friday 9/4 at 5.30pm. I’m honored to be selected and included and pleased that Yankee managed to get that this is a photomontage and NOT the Colonial underwater, which was not my attempt to make political commentary back in 2006 but just something that came together that I thought was lovely and cool and was part of a show called “Tidal Forces” that I did back then, just a couple of months before Katrina hit!
Downtown wireless – Berkshire Eagle Online
This is great news and good to see the Chamber thinking so forward. With all the discussion in communities around the country about free wifi, it’s great to see action in place of words. I can’t wait to get my email walking down North Street without a thought. Free wifi is a community designator – a valuable resource that will accelerate and define the progress that the city is making by focusing on it’s own resources of creativity, talent, entrepreneurship and initiative. Good Job!
3d Thursday is a great thing.
I’ve caught a number of the 3d thursdays over the last two years in Pittsfield, MA. The brain-child of Pittsfield Cultural Czar Megan Whilden, the celebration of life in the summer in the Berkshires centered on North Street in Pittsfield has grown to be a monster, but a gentle giant one. Blessed with excellent weather for the last outing in August (3d thursdays will continue in September and October), and hosting a top-notch criterium bicycle race in the waning daylight hour, the scene was amazing to behold.
It’s a testament to vision: if you build it, they will come. It’s absolutely amazing to see all and sundry come out to enjoy a walk around this great city. Food vendors, farmers, hipsters, tatooist, kids on bikes, hot rods. Everything is there. Anyway, congratulations and a big shout-out to Megan for her vision and her work and for all the people who have helped and worked so hard to achieve this great thing.
I took a lot of fun photos here on flickr and some here:
Creative Assets
I’ve been at work with Berkshire Creative for about 18 months now as part of the steering group and various committees. (That’s an illustration of the “Creative Cluster” we did up top.) It’s been a fun process and great for the Berkshires and I’ve enjoyed it a lot. We’ve relaunched the website as a wordpress blog to open up the conversation and get more people involved and I like the way it is going. I made a post there which has got me thinking about the changing landscape of culture, institutions and investment. Here’s the excerpt:
“One argument that we hear is that “there are too many non-profits in the Berkshires, all going to the same funding sources”. I think that is short-sighted. Many of the institutions in our area realize the substantial bulk of their funding from outside sources, include donors from outside of the region, and national-level granting organizations. These funds come into our economy and stay here, paid out in salaries, construction, resources and other ways. I’d like to predict the day that other communities come “shopping” in the Berkshires, seeking to lure our cultural treasures away with promises of new investment, much as happened in professional sports, with cities competing for valuable franchises. We may not be there yet, but it’s interesting to consider.”
What do you think? What if, say, Providence RI came knocking on Shakespeare & Company’s door with an offer they couldn’t refuse? What if the Hamptons became a second home for Jacob’s Pillow II? What is the role of place in creativity and expression? What if an organization decided to “branch out” and create a second or third site? Is the experience transportable? I think of the phenomenal, for-profit explosive growth in something like “Cirque du Soleil” and it makes me wonder. Understand, I’m not advocating either way. The concept just popped into my mind this morning. But it does make you think. Also, I think it might help as an exercise to imagine such scenarios when assessing the relative value and economic impact of the cultural assets of our region.
Thoughts? Post a comment.
Mass. appoints Creative Economy Director
In a forward thinking move, the state has appointed Jason S. Schupbach to be the new “Creative Economy Director”. Here’s the article. This is an interesting development. I’ve been working on the steering committee and executive committee of Berkshire Creative, our regional Creative Economy project for the last 2 years or so. I got involved because I felt it was important that the business community see the cultural institutions of our area as keys to the health of the local economy.
Since that time, things have really evolved and mutated in many directions. The website I cobbled together for the project has some of the info, but it’s a fast moving target so we’ll be addressing the web presence to reflect that soon.
For me, the Creative Economy is about recognizing the potential impact of expression brought to business. We’re finding that the real value in the process is in the collaboration: the bringing together of people and ideas on a regular basis to exchange. These conversations have already directly impacted my bottom line over the last 12 months, with new business opportunities and outlets for my creative work.
What’s next? we’re meeting with the new director at the end of the month to find out what the state has in mind and how we’re all going to collaborate. Stay Tuned.
Nice article on me in the Berkshire Eagle
There was a nice article about me in the Berkshire Eagle last week. Here’s the link
Here’s the text. Thanks to Claire Cox for writing it and Ben Garver for the nice image.
A lens on Kevin Sprague
By Claire Cox, Special to The Eagle
Article Last Updated: 05/22/2008 02:08:45 PM EDT
Kevin Sprague
Thursday, May 22
LENOX — From opera to Shakespeare, with the Gilded Age between, Kevin Sprague devotes his communications talents to enhancing cultural life in the Berkshires.
Viewing the world through a camera lens, he creates photographs that attract audiences to the theater, dance, opera, art and film.
“Images do a huge lifting job for the theaters in helping people understand what they are to see, and also remember what it was like to see it. Our challenge and goal is to make the place successful,” he said in an interview.
As a graphics expert working with a computer and digital skills, he applies his creativity to producing ads, brochures, playbills, programs and web pages for entertainments across the county. Once a teenage handyman at Shakespeare & Company, he has been the company’s window on the world for over 12 years. He is also called on for promotional material and photo-ops for the Berkshire Theater Festival in Stockbridge and the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield.
Photography has been a staple of Sprague’s life since as a child in Lenox he picked up his first Nikon to shoot pictures on film he processed in a family darkroom.
“Growing up, it was something we all did,” he said. “There were always cameras around.”
For the last eight years. He has processed digital photos in his computer “darkroom” in Studio 2 on Undermountain Road. There, he and his six-member staff also create audio
Advertisement and promotional material for cultural nonprofit and business organizations.
Born in Manhattan, Sprague grew up in Lenox, attended Berkshire Country Day School, Hotchkiss, and Cornell University, where he graduated with an English major.
“In college I didn’t pursue photography at all,” he said, “but I wrote a novel titled ‘Viewfinder’ with a photographer for the protagonist. It’s still on a shelf.”
Having no job after school and being “too snobbish to take a writing job because I was going to be a novelist,” he said, he went to work developing sales materials and videos for his grandfather, Milos Krofta, developer of water and wastewater systems.
That experience led Sprague to start his own industrial video business. He added professional photography in response to requests for graphic designs for brochures created with computer processed photos.
From film to digital
He began working with Shakespeare & Company in 1996, he said, and four years later he bought his first digital camera “and never looked back.”
The transition has made it possible for him to create all of Shakespeare & Company’s graphics as well as its website, and he has compiled a volume of his photos titled “Imagining Shakespeare,” which he hopes will be published.
“What blew the doors off for me was the transition to digital,” he said. “I had been spending 10 grand a year on film and processing.”
His first defining moment in digitalizing occurred when he photographed the cast of “Coreolanus” in Shakespeare & Company’s stable theater at The Mount, he said. Instead of using 10 rolls of film, much of it unacceptable, he clicked 980 digital shots, all of which were useable.
“Digits are free,” he observed. “They don’t cost anything to shoot.”
Sprague works from his studio in a converted barn, next to the home he shares with his wife Christine, who is an architect and president of Ventfort Hall, and two sons. From there, he pursues an almost nonstop schedule in keeping Berkshire culture before the public and having an active involvement in environmental causes.
Collections of Sprague’s images of water invading architecture, scenic panoramas and prints combining art and digital photos have been exhibited in galleries in the Berkshires. He has been honored for creating “Muse,” a volume of composite images, and his work has been seen in fine art collections and magazines and on posters an book covers.
“A lot is coming up,” he said. “Summer is really busy, running from one shoot to the next. I shoot a lot because my relations to my clients are different than most commercial photographers. My business is as much about design, marketing and communication as photography. I use photographs to get to the end result, which is marketing and communication.
“Photography is just a piece of the pie, only about 25 percent,” he explained. “The rest is applying it, using it.”
Lenox Land Trust
As an environmental activist, he started the Lenox Land Trust eight years ago, partly out of concern for the 150 acres of scenic property his family owns locally.
“I want to see that the land is used right,” he explained. “It weighs heavily on my mind. I needed to find allies, so I created the land trust.”
Sprague is proud of the fact that he helped “shepherd” the Lenox Community Preservation Act to adoption by the town’s voters.
“The theater comes first, however,” he said, “because shooting productions is fun, and I love it when promotions sell tickets.”
Reawakening the Berkshires
Sprague added that the Berkshires may have moved through a difficult time, and the cultural scene has been elevating its self in the last 10 years.
In helping to cultivate the cultural life of the Berkshires, he has become a member of the Steering Committee of the Berkshire Creative Economy Project, which is seeking to develop economic opportunities “based on the intersection of art, culture and design,” he said.
“Primarily so far it focuses on the idea that that the economic development of the Berkshires does not necessarily rely on GE coming back,” Sprague said. “It’s a shift in gears for the old and new schools.”
As people think of Napa’s wine in California and jazz in New Orleans, he said, “What we really want people to think about when they think of the Berkshires is art, creativity and culture.”
Getting Creative in the Berkshires
It’s that time of year again here in the Berkshires when everything is starting to hum. The theatres are open, Tanglewood will be soon, the Museum has A/C…. The biggest things on my radar in this respect is the stuff happening in the new Production and Performing Arts Center (PaPA) at Shakespeare & Company, and the new prospects for Berkshire Creative and all the great energy in those discussions. Right now you can get out to see Elizabeth Aspenlieder and her wonderful compatriots in “The Ladies Man” at SCO and the upcoming “The Mysteries of Harris Burdick” at BSC should be great.
Don’t forget to visit the new blog at Shakespeare.org.
Here’s some shots of the new space at shakespeare:
