Elevation 66 Brewing recently opened their doors in the town of El Cerrito, CA. It’s a small brewpub operation started by three friends who use to work for Pyramid Brewery in Berkeley. When I caught wind of their impending grand opening, I got in touch with one of the partners to write a story for Bay Area Craft Beer.

Shortly thereafter I got a sneak peak of the new space and did a short interview with partner Brian Kelly. As usual, I snapped a bunch of interior photos and a couple exterior shots so readers could get a good look at the new venue.

After the story was posted online Kelly got in touch with me. He asked if they could use my picture of their lilac draped sign on their new website. I quoted them a very reasonable price, asked for a photo credit, wrote up an amicable contract and the deal was done. This is how things should work.

They did a nice job of incorporating it into their homepage and it looks pretty sharp. If you’re ever in the area do stop in and have a beer. I’m partial to their British IPA.

Photo Client: Elevation 66 Brewing

When I started taking photography a little more seriously last year I started posting images online to Flickr where I could build a portfolio and promote my work. Unfortunately, using the site comes at a cost. Countless individuals scour the popular website to find images they use without permission on blog posts, products and in print, that make revenue and leave photographers empty handed.

It should be noted that Flickr users can offer their photos for use under the guise of a Creative Commons license, allowing for greater usage flexibility across the web in exchange for promotion, but I choose to mark my work as copyright protected. I’ve been selling images occasionally and feel I deserve compensation.

Since I’ve been placing my work on the web I’ve discovered at least a dozen incidents where bloggers and major companies have used my photos without permission (there are probably more I’m not aware of).  Sometimes they credit the source and other times they don’t. Either way it’s a clear violation of my copyright and I immediately demand its removal by contacting editors or bloggers. I’ll also use tools like Twitter and Facebook to shame them into submission.

Most of the time editors and companies apologize and quickly remove the photo. I use to be satisfied with this response, but not any longer. I’m tired of fighting people who either don’t understand copyright or don’t give a damn. Now I’m demanding compensation and threatening legal action.

The latest copyright abuser is the website NovatoPatch.com, which is a local community news source run by the parent company AOL. They operate hundreds of hyper local news sites staffed with amateur and professional writers to serve under served communities. The site generates revenue through advertising.

On September 30 NovatoPatch.com authors Brent Ainsworth of Novato and Christian Kallen of Healdsburg published Homebrewers Tests Skills at America’s Top Beer Festival. Google Alerts notified me via RSS feed that my name appeared on the website so I checked the page. I found my photo of homebrewer Alan Atha featured in the photo section. The authors gave me credit and cited Flickr as the source.

As you can see the photo also appeared on their Facebook page, where it still resides.

While it’s nice that they appreciated my photo enough to use it, they did not ask for permission, which violates my copyright protection. Apparently one of the authors did not see this “© Brian Stechschulte” underneath my photo or didn’t care. Mr. Ainsworth claims to have been a journalist since 1987, which leads me to believe he should know something about copyright protection and ethics (UPDATE BELOW: Author apologized).

After noticing the violation I took two screens shots of the page andI immediately notified Patch.com of the DMCA violation. I also flagged the photo on NovatoPatch.com as being inappropriate and tweeted about the incident including @PatchTweet and @NovatoPatch in the message so they would be aware of the incident. In addition, I requested $50 as compensation and threatened to pursue legal action.

Within an hour the photo was removed from the website and I received notification from Patch.com support. The email didn’t include an apology nor did it acknowledge my request for financial compensation. I also did not hear from Brent Ainsworth or Christian Kallen via Twitter or email.

Therefore I decided to contact Robert Gale who runs the website Companies That Steal My Photos. He’s also become frustrated with businesses that abuse copyright protection and has gone on the offensive. I became aware of the project a few months ago and vowed I would use it if need be. His website is in it’s infancy, but has the potential to influence companies based on the results he’s managed to get so far. He posted my story the other day and I notified Patch.com of its existence and that it won’t be removed until compensation is received.

I’m hoping this post also plays a role in publicly shaming Patch.com into acknowledging my demand. At the least, this web page will appear in search results for Patch.com, casting doubt over their ethics, competence and business sense so future partners and employees know who they’re dealing with.

UPDATES (Apology accepted, but still unresolved)

(Oct. 5) The author of the story finally acknowledged my demand in the comments section of the Novato Patch article, where I’ve been complaining loudly. Thankfully, new comments  also appear on the homepage. Nice website design! Unfortunately his response over e-mail contained no apology and he deferred the matter to the Patch legal time. The fight goes on.

(Oct. 6) I added the Novato Patch Facebook post about their article showing my photo, which is still on their fan page. Not that I need any more evidence.

(Oct. 17) The author of the article Brent Ainsworth called and profusely apologized for using the photograph. According to him, he simply didn’t see the copyright symbol on the Flickr page. Apparently, upper management at Patch.com recently sent an email to all their editors stating they could use Flickr images under certain conditions. Ainsworth said their criteria was crystal clear and he simply dropped the ball in this instance, which happened to be the first time he used anything on Flickr. Also, it should be noted that the folks at Patch.com did not allow him to apologize to me until now for whatever reason. Unfortunately, compensation for the photograph’s usage was not offered, so although I accept his apology and he seems like a nice guy caught between Patch.com management and their legal team, this blog post will remain online.

Patch.com Doesn’t Respect Copyrighted Photos

NIAD's new homepage launched in August of 2011

When I first started working at NIAD Art Center back in July of 2007 I wasn’t exactly a web design expert. I had dabbled a bit with html and did have a rudimentary website for my artwork.  Piecing it together was a painful process.  So when I was faced with the task of maintaining a website for a small non-profit I was a little nervous to say the least. It was a weakness on my resume, but over the last few years I’ve managed to make updates and overhauls with just a few minor speed bumps.

Since then I’ve spent a lot of my free time building websites for art and beer related endeavors.  Along the way I tried learning and writing html, but didn’t have the focus and determination. Updating NIAD’s old website required using Adobe Dreamweaver, which has a built in design window where you can visually compose a page without having to write paragraphs of html code. You still have to know a bit of html, but the program is designed for non-coders.

NIAD’s website has gone through several iterations since the mid 90′s and the prior version received a lot of compliments, but over the last year it started to look tired and too static. In addition, the size, scope of information and the complexity required to make updates made it tedious to maintain.  NIAD’s website needed an overhaul and I was happy to take on the challenge, although a bit nervous.

NIAD's old homepage, or "splash" page as some people might call it.

NIAD's old "About" page, depicting the overall structure and navigation style of the site.

My goals for the redesign included improving the overall appearance, incorporating a blog, employing a more user-friendly management system and scaling down the overall size.

Prior to starting the project I had already built AllOverBeer.com and BayAreaCraftBeer.com using WordPress. Originally designed as a simple blogging platform, WordPress has become a sophisticated content management system and contains several advantages: it’s free open-source software, all the design and updating is done online, the interface is easy to use, the support forum is extremely helpful and the software can be modified using plug-ins. Plug-ins are small bits of programming created by third parties that add additional functionality. With all this in mind and my prior experience, I naturally chose WordPress for NIAD’s new website.

The first task was to find and purchase a WordPress theme. A theme is the design (look and feel) or visual framework of a WordPress website. It dictates how a visitor navigates and arranges the photos and text. There are free themes, but most of them don’t meet the needs of a business looking for a unique design. Since NIAD’s an art organization we needed something playful yet straightforward.

Designers around the world have created thousands of themes to choose from and finding one that suits every design criteria can be tricky. After sifting through a few dozen options that closely resembled what I thought NIAD needed, I settled on one that was made for non-profits. It’s a clean uncluttered design, it’s easy to navigate, the homepage layout is streamlined, and it allowed for a good amount of customization, which is key.

It took me about two and a half months to finish the site while juggling all my other responsibilities. I redesigned NIAD’s logo, wrangled the site’s CSS a bit, played with some of the PHP coding to alter a few theme functions, incorporated a streamlined shopping cart plug-in and worked on a lot of the written content that was either outdated or stale. I also enjoyed incorporating all my photographs into the website. Over the last two years I’ve built a sizable portfolio of portraits, facility shots and images of special events.

Left to right: Old & New logo. We decided to modernize and simplify the logo.

One major item that we excluded from the new website are individual artist pages. While they did provide visitors with some insight into our artists and their work, maintaining the pages was a monumental task. Rewriting biographies and swapping out artwork with fresh material was labor intensive.

Moving forward we’re going to put the spotlight on our artists in the blog and over time an archive of information about our artists will accumulate that visitors can access via a tag system. Some people may not agree with this decision, but it makes the website more manageable and keeps the site fresh in Google’s eyes, whose site crawler likes to see new information that will keep us near the top of search engine results.

New Website Design for NIAD Art Center

As Gallery Director at NIAD Art Center it’s my job to shine a light on the work produced by sixty-five artists with disabilities in our studio that aren’t capable of self-promotion. Through exhibitions, marketing, the gallery store, website and networking sometimes these artists get well-deserved attention, but often it takes an outside ambassador for the work to gain broader exposure.

Last spring Larry Rinder, the director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA), informed me he was co-curating an exhibition called Create with Matthew Higgs, the director of White Columns in New York, featuring art from NIAD, Creative Growth and Creativity Explored. All three organizations reside in the Bay Area, have a similar mission and were founded by the same pioneering couple, Elias and Florence-Ludens Katz.

Left to right: Larry Rinder and Matthew Higgs. Taken at the press preview.

Both curators fell in love with the art produced at Creative Growth and Creativity Explored when they lived in the respective neighborhoods years ago, downtown Oakland and San Francisco’s Mission District. Since then they’ve placed art from those programs in exhibits around the country and some of the artists are now widely collected and exhibited.

NIAD’s been blessed with great ambassadors and successful artists, but it’s remained below the radar of many art world institutions and collectors for a variety of reasons. Our location and smaller size likely play a role along with a lack of serendipity. As I mentioned before, sometimes having the art in the right place at the right time and seen by the right people can yield results.  The BAM/PFA exhibit could play a huge role in garnering more notoriety for our artists and organization.

Create opened at BAM/PFA on May 11 and will be on display until September 25, 2011. Then the show will travel for two years with help from Independent Curators International, which is currently promoting the exhibit to institutions around the country. A gorgeous catalog also accompanies the show. It contains an essay by Larry Rinder, short bio’s about all twenty artists and images of the featured artwork (I photographed NIAD’s artwork).

Four NIAD artists were selected to participate in the show: Attilio Crescenti, Marlon Mullen, Willie Harris and Jeremy Burleson. The first two no longer work in our studio. Crescenti passed away in the late 1980’s and Mullen left the program about 5 years ago. Burleson and Harris both currently work at NIAD five days a week.

Crescenti’s residence at NIAD was brief, about 8 months. During that time he created an elaborate set of pen and ink drawings of human like heads with an exploding array of appendages, which appear to be arms, hands and fingers. They’re mesmerizing in their complexity and symbolism.

Marlon Mullen was a painter who moved from representational images of bridges and ice cream cones to complete abstraction. He would rip photos from magazines and would completely deconstruct them into their simple and essential elements using vivid color and loose brushstrokes.

Willie Harris has been working at NIAD for around twenty years and his work has revolved around the same set of images and basic forms. He’ll either draw the same house or human figure, or he’ll paint circles or heavily encrusted color field paintings using emphatic brushstrokes that are minimal and sculptural in scope. The latter set of work is on display in Create.

Jeremy Burleson’s work might be the most unique of the group. Using only paper, tape, glue and the occasional found object, he creates medical instruments, handcuffs and lamps. The objects are closely tied to memories and experiences that he wants to recreate.

I attended the press preview earlier this week and the experience was extremely gratifying. The range and quality of the work is impressive and listening to Rinder and Higgs passionately talk about the art filled me with pride. For example, Higgs felt Mullen’s work is the best painting he’s seen in five years.

All of the featured artists deserve broader recognition and acceptance by the art world. Not simply due to its occasionally bizarre nature, but because it’s on par with mainstream contemporary art. It’s just as intriguing, well made and captivating. Therefore, it should no longer be considered Outsider Art; a term used to define art created by isolated self taught artists whose work is not part of the artistic establishment.

This is no longer the case. These artists work in rich, vibrant communities, creating artwork that is just as vital and important as able-bodied artists who toil away in private studios. In addition, several of the featured artists from the other programs are part of the art historical canon. The BAM/PFA exhibit acknowledges their legitimacy and will hopefully overturn many of the entrenched misconceptions and stereotypes about their work.

If you live in the Bay Area be sure to check out the show. If not, hopefully it will travel to a museum near you.

Here’s a short video I made several years ago of Jeremy Burleson making a paper syringe.

NIAD Art Featured at BAM/PFA

I took the photo last October during a dinner I was invited to by the breweries PR firm. Apparently, after blogging about beer for only 3 months I was considered a member of the media, which is still an odd notion to me.

The event took place at Maverick restaurant in San Francisco and celebrated the release of Widmer’s new Barrel Aged Brrrbon beer. They paired it with several yummy plates during a five-course meal. I wrote about the evening and a personal tour I received of the Portland brewery over at All Over Beer.

The photo was taken during an intermission. It was an unseasonably warm day and everyone spilled out onto the Mission District sidewalk. Quite a few establishments in the city don’t have air conditioning since we’re perpetually cooled by the chilly Pacific Ocean.

I used my 35mm prime lens, which is great for portraits and low light without flash. My only gripe about the photo is the figure walking towards the camera in the background. He’s a bit of a distraction, but otherwise the bokeh is great, it’s casual and their gaze is locked into the lens.

Here’s the original for comparison. Their design firm did a little editing on the left side by removing the cars and darkening the background.

Left to right: Kurt and Rob.

A Portrait of Rob & Kurt

My last completed work was a large format digital print.

Although I had the time of my life at CalArts it was also an intellectual struggle that’s persisted to this day. Going in I was a very intuitive artist. I would typically let my imagination spew out on paper with little regard for theory or conceptual justification, which are major players at CalArts. Art was a playful exercise and by the end of grad school it turned into mental gridlock. Questions and doubt plagued every artistic move. What does this mean if I do that? How will it be interpreted? It has to mean something.

This ongoing debate was making me miserable so I decided to throw myself into some other creative outlets. NIAD has also been a nice antidote. The artists who work there are mostly free of the aforementioned dilemma. They put pen or paint to paper and simply create. I tried to work like this in undergrad, at least as much as I could. A lot of artists wish they could completely block the left side of their brain. It’s nearly impossible for most, while others through misfortune don’t have a choice.

Last month I had a wonderful encounter with the artist James Pitt. He works in the Mission District of San Francisco and I paid him a studio visit on behalf of NIAD. A friend thought James might appreciate NIAD art and encouraged him to contact me via e-mail.

Pitt graduated with his MFA from Mills College in 2003, the same year I finished at Cal Arts. He was making art and teaching at the California College of the Arts until 2007, when a street sweeper hit his car head on in Sonoma. The terrible accident left him with a variety of debilitating injuries and long-term disabilities. He has chronic memory loss, trouble focusing at times, has difficulty reading and some physical limitations, all of which you would never comprehend if you met him in person.

His studio is in a converted attic with a single skylight that floods the room with a soft glow. He shares the space with a housemate. Pitt primarily makes sculpture, which is supplemented by drawings. The 3D work is essentially abstract, built from cardboard, wood, clay and is coated with various shades of white, grey and beige with a bit of color thrown in from time to time. They’re personal in size and can occupy a small shelf or pedestal without trouble.

Prior to the accident Pitt was a self-described conceptual artist. He would thoroughly research his subject matter and create highly complex work. He now spends his time trying to capture memories and shapes that have occupied his psyche, but struggle to flow from his fingertips.  His practice is entirely different from subject matter to creative process.

His drawings are a good place to start when contemplating his work. It’s where he tries to organize his thoughts and make sense of the information he encounters every day or that clouds his memory. Large sheets of paper are filled with row after row of shapes. Most are rectangular figures that seem to evolve as they cross the page. They grow arms, intertwine and sometimes turn into recognizable objects like shoes or books. Occasionally, words dot the page in the form of titles or phrases, but this is a recent development.

The three dimensional work emerges from these sketches and the forms take shape from plywood or cardboard with help from a knife or jigsaw. It’s the only power tool he feels comfortable using, which may sound like a limitation, but the irregular lines and shapes it produces evokes the hand drawn sketch and makes them appear whimsical. The flat pieces are then pieced together, painted and primarily form irregular circles filled with interlocking lines, protruding orbs and sometimes hold wire or mesh.

Despite his limitations Pitt has found success. His new work has been widely exhibited through gallery representation in San Francisco and Berlin, where he was preparing to ship his latest sculptures. The pieces are also fetching good prices, a small collector base has formed and he recently received a nice review from San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker.

Pitt and I spent an hour talking about the work. It had been awhile since I sunk my teeth into art speak and I thoroughly enjoyed the moment. I asked a lot of questions. I was curious about color and material choices, but his creative process primarily intrigued me and how the artwork was now free of conceptual underpinnings. The more I learned the more I found myself in the awkward position of admiring the outcome of his hardship. I would love to dump the conceptual baggage that nags at my own creative psyche. I just wish it didn’t take a car accident to achieve that goal.

Let me be clear, I don’t regret my creative path and I haven’t given away my paint brushes. I received a fantastic education and made some great friends. As time goes on and I’m slowly removed from those days in graduate school I’ll find the inspiration to create again and my visit with James Pitt was a good start.

Finding Adversity & Inspiration in James Pitt