Alonzo Townsend, Founder of The Townsend and Three Agency, stopped by to talk with Nancy about his career and his agency's new collaboration with the Dark Room at the Grandel. ------
The Townsend and Three Agency has taken over booking for the the Dark Room at the Grandel concert series. The artist, entertainment, and booking agency is owned by Alonzo Townsend of St. Louis. ———
Alonzo Townsend is the son of the Grammy-winning St. Louis blues musician Henry Townsend, who died in 2006, and his mother was also a musician of note, blues singer Vernell Townsend. He started working for his father, on the business side, at the age of nine, and his career progressed from there. ———
His spoken word recording, “A Letter To My City,” was featured as a part of the 18 N 18 St. Louis Blues Society Compilation Album. Townsend is a speaker and writer and board member for the St. Louis Blues Society, Blues Education programs including “Hip-Hop to The Blues,” and a presenter/youth educator for Blues in The Schools Programs. ———
“I want to make sure we have a platform to showcase the legends we still have,” he has said. ———
“But this is also where we get to highlight the underdogs, the future, who are looking for opportunities but don’t always get the co-sign, don’t get the opportunity when it comes to getting chosen for certain festivals and certain stages.” ———
Jessica Adkins is a multi-instrumentalist, instructional designer, philosopher, and filmmaker. Originally from Milwaukee, she moved to St. Louis in 2014 to pursue a PhD in Philosophy with a minor in Women and Gender Studies at SLU. Her dissertation focused on the public exhibition of anatomical bodies. She can most often be found around town playing accordion in The Opera Bell Band, Ryan Koenig and the Goldenrods, and The So Grand Polka Band. The pandemic allowed her the free time to concentrate on composing original polka scores, and she hopes to help keep polka music alive in St. Louis. In her free time, she creates stop motion videos out of paper and has placed 2nd in the City Garden Film Competition and has been screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival.
Independent Visual Artist, Sarah Paulsen, stopped by to talk to Nancy about her life and work. -----
Raised in Kirkwood, Missouri, Sarah Paulsen is an artist, filmmaker and community organizer whose artwork has been exhibited widely in local and national exhibitions, and whose prize-winning films have been featured in the St. Louis International Film Festival, the True/False Film Festival, the Black Maria Film Festival, the Motivate Film Festival and the Chicago International Children's Film Festival, among many others. She was a 2018 Great Rivers Biennial Winner culminating in an exhibit at the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis. A 2010 C.A.T. Institute fellow and 2015 Regional Arts Commission Artist Fellow, she has garnered numerous awards for her work and also completed several residencies – including the Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris. A dedicated advocate for social change, a key aspect of Paulsen’s practice has always involved the orchestration of large-scale community projects, such as participatory public murals, thematic round-table discussions and the now-annual People’s Joy Parade on Cherokee Street, currently in its ninth year. Paulsen holds a B.A. in visual art from the University of Missouri, Columbia and an M.F.A. from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art at Washington University. She lives and works in St. Louis, where she teaches art and animation at Marian Middle School and local colleges.
Catherine Dudley-Rose, independent filmmaker, actress, and musician stopped by to speak with Nancy about her life and career.
Catherine is an award winning writer/director, actress and musician. Her first feature film, Parallel Chords, was released theatrically in Los Angeles after winning a number of awards at national film festivals. She has taught at the NY Stage & Film Program, the Broadway Theater Institute, and been a guest artist, director and performer internationally. She is a National Film Challenge winner, and an Emerging Director finalist in Seattle. She was a kick off speaker for the Citizen Jane Film Festival, celebrating female directors, and recently she was chosen to receive a RAC grant. She is an NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) funded grant recipient for her feature length screenplay Parallel Chords, and has been commissioned to write three other screenplays. Mentioned in LA Times, Hollywood reporter and Women and Hollywood for Parallel Chords winning "Best Feature Writer" sponsored by the Writer's Guild of America, West. ------
Andrew Newman, photographer and Educator at the John Burroughs School, stopped by to speak with Nancy about his exhibition, Plastic Ocean, at the Bonsack Gallery.
About Andrew Newman:
Andrew Newman ’87 joined the Burroughs faculty in 1992. He teachers photography and is the school photographer. Newman is also the faculty coordinator of Student Activities; faculty sponsor of the Student Congress; and a faculty co-sponsor of The Hague International Model United Nations. He holds a bachelor of arts degree from Vanderbilt University and a masters of education degree from Washington University.
About Plastic Ocean:
Andrew Newman spent part of his sabbatical year from John Burroughs School out on the ocean studying and photographing the "Great Garbage Patch," an enormous area in the ocean littered with the refuse of humanity, especially plastics. ------
Researchers from The Ocean Cleanup project claimed that the patch covers 1.6 million square kilometres (620 thousand square miles).[4] Some of the plastic in the patch is over 50 years old, and includes items (and fragments of items) such as "plastic lighters, toothbrushes, water bottles, pens, baby bottles, cell phones, plastic bags, and nurdles." The small fibers of wood pulp found throughout the patch are "believed to originate from the thousands of tons of toilet paper flushed into the oceans daily." ------