6:50pm Okay, just a little bit before the Salon gets underway tonight.  All the artists are here.  Daravann Yi, Marianne Bernstein, Katie Sweeney and Cecelia Smith.  The Laurie Beechman Cabaret space looks fantastic, and the beer from Philadelphia Brewing Company is chilling in the bucket.  Volunteers Sebastian and Shane are here helping us keep things on track!

7:21pm Just met Jose Cedillos–a bricolage artist–who we’ve now confirmed, and can announce, will be featured in the March 11th Salon!  Also part of the Salon will be a fantastic documentary film by Olivia Antsis, Barry Vacker, and Brett Sroka called Space Times Square, a presentation by Angela Krofton on some recent work for the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts program, and a fascinating collaborative poetic memoir presented jointly be Dr. Niama Williams and Reverend Joseph Massey.  I’m already excited!

7:33 We’ll be starting relatively soon, just a little behind schedule.  Great to see our boar members Karen Shakoske and Priscilla Rosenwald in the house!

7:47 And we’re underway!

8:00 Daravann Yi talks about life under the Khmer Rouge.  It’s incredible to imagine life without constant connectivity.  He didn’t see his family or hear about them for months and years.  He considers himself lucky to have only lost half of his family.  Khmer Rouge on Wikipedia.  He collected Beta Fish–it’s such a charming and devastating detail–and worried about how his fish would fare when he had to leave.

8:06 Fulfilling the dreams of his children is a marvel to him–allowing them to eat Pat’s and Geno’s cheesesteaks!  

8:09 Yi has an extraordinary catalog of photos from his days in Cambodia.  They had a pretty cool Citroen sedan!  French engineering…

8:15 What a great story.  Daravann Yi is giving so much back to Cambodia!  Check him out at www.saltseeker.com

8:17 Marianne Bernstein is up next with work from Tatted.  The subject on the cover of the book is here tonight!  (She told a story at a StorySlam last year: “Secrets”)  She worked for the Maysles brothers.  Did not know that….Brian from Grit City, Inc. is here.  Tatted will be only their second book!  

8:21 Bernstein ran around South Street asking people to take photos of their tattoos.  ”What I like about South Street is everyone says ‘Yes’”  

8:25 Interesting comparison to making documentary films.  I didn’t know that Philadelphia was home to the first legal tattoo parlors in the United States.

8:29 Extraordinary range of motivations and stories behind the tattoos people get.  One of her subjects is a prostitute with PIMP tattoo on her neck.  Turns out it’s an acronym:  Positive Improvement Motivated Person (or something, she can’t remember)

8:34 In some ways the photographs are just an excuse to talk to lots of people you might never encounter.   This program is so in the spirit of what we’re all about at First Person Arts.  Fabulous.  People in the crowd are recognizing some of the photo subjects–we’re at Broad and South after all!

8:39  Frank, who was featured on the flyer is here in the audience tonight!  

Bernstein thinks more people get words tattooed in Philadelphia than elsewhere.  

Marianne doesn’t have her own tattoo!

8:42 Interesting questions about tattoos here.  The tattoo as “spectacle.”  I wonder if the ubiquity of the tattoo has diminished its value as spectacle.

8:45 Marianne sees doing portraiture as a way to make connections to other people.   Yup.  Does anyone regret their tattoos?  Evidently not among Marianne’s subjects…. Ooh, and we get to see Frank’s back!   Film at 11, or thereabouts…

9:05 It’s after intermission, and Cecelia’s up, showing off the Complaint Choir music video!

The Philly Complaint Choir was so much fun!  Get the whole story at complaints.firstpersonarts.org

9:13  Great to hear from Cecelia Smith about her experience shooting the Philadelphia Complaint Choir.  She treated it as a journalistic piece.  The final piece will be done before may and will be called The Art of Fine Whining.

9:20 Hearing it from the filmmaker’s perspective, it’s even more amazing that we pulled the complaint choir together between September and the 2008 First Person Festival last year.  Crazy.  In case we haven’t thanked our singers enough, THANK YOU!

9:25 Oh wonderful!  Cecelia’s drawn a comparison to the tattoos with the way people in the Philly Complaint Choir adorned themselves.  We’ll definitely have updates on how Cecelia’s project evolves.  Should be sometime in the Spring or Summer.  

9:29 This is a masterful presentation by Katie Sweeney.  Really a great way to make a blog come alive for an audience.  http://broken-umbrellas.blogspot.com/  

There’s no mistaking that Katie Sweeney is a splendid copy writer.  The crowd loves this.  In Q&A, Katie maintains perfect journalistic integrity.  She never touches the umbrellas she shoots!   A great note to end the evening on!