January 2019 Session with the Convo Combo (Rob Kovacs, Pat Perkinson, & myself) covering Ornette Coleman’s ‘Turnaround.’ Here’s a little video I threw together using Rubin Henriquez’s wonderful photographs from that afternoon.
Joe Cunningham’s Roeboy Customized Gibson LP “Zoso”
In 2008 When I first started teaching at Hostos, The then dean of facilities Steve Delgado introduced me to an outbuilding full of interesting tools and people, none more interesting than my friend Joe Cunningham. Over the years Joe has been the guy I could call up and ask for help finding the right tool for a job, who to most effectively beg for LED bulbs when we wanted to reduce heat build-up in studio rooms, and where to get the best BBQ in Putnam county where we both lived. I even brought him an old Alamo amp that the laminate birch was falling off of, and he replaced the laminate entirely, turning an old harmonica amp into a piece of art. As thanks, I found an old 2nd Gibson Robot Les Paul online that had been stripped for parts, and I renovated it into a heavy-duty rock and roll guitar with vintage 60s electronics.
The wiring template I built along with some Pickups that were donated by my pal Scott Marcus when I rewired his Melody Maker
I always sign my work under the cover plate
The autotune tuners had been harvested before I got the axe, but the serial number is for real, and I put in the cool vintage grovers. Hefty for extra sustain!
Snake wood accents give the plain matt finish some class
Re-fret job with fatter 70s era frets and added a micro-tuning saddle for primo intonation
Joe and his new guitar
The Nurturing Nature show in 2008 was an exhibition at the Art Mission in Binghamton, New York where I was provided the opportunity to bring together a number of my interactive installations and develop several new pieces.
a folding slide screen of my adopted family
The newer work involved large wooden screens that I designed to hold film slides of collected portraits from my two families (my birth family and my adopted family). These folding screens were presented with projection systems back lighting them for audiences to better examine their content. In addition, I created two large solid screen portraits of my two mothers.
solid portrait screen of my birth mother
In 1994, after the loss of my adopted parents, I stumbled into a discovery that would change my life forever. Within two days of making an exploratory phone call to an adoptee hotline, I discovered my birth family. In them I found answers to questions I had never really dared to ask, and I was soon discovering commonalities that I had never expected to exist.
Ten years later, armed only with a small hobbyist’s video camera, I began recording interviews with family members from both my adopted and birth families. I stitched together these interviews into a stirring exploration of family, a modern-day quilt, which tells this story, the story of my birt parents, and the subsequent reunion that has taken place.
Einstein & the Honeybee is a board game that I conceived of while writing our game design textbook. It introduces young naturalists and physicists to the fascinating world of bees, inspiring an interest in apiology and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Players explore the garden of Albert and Elsa Einstein as they work to pollinate flowers and rescue lost bees while avoiding predators, pesticides, and harmful mites. Players are able to use some of Einstein’s discoveries to their advantage as they struggle to save the hive. It has been designed for players age 8 and up, and can be found on sale here at The Game Crafter.
Here’s a video the folks at Colmena created for us to crowdfund the original production run…
Game tiles from the Einstein & The Honeybee board game