Dreams, Moments, Travels
Just after Thanksgiving, the Christmas decorations go up in earnest. This year will not be your average ordinary Christmas; it’s going to be a Costco Christmas. Throughout the neighborhoods of Phoenix, hardly a street has been missed where old Saint Big Box has failed to put down the oversized snowglobe, Sponge Bob, or inflatable 80-foot-tall Santa Claus.
The two guys on the left are the Famous Kurchoff Brothers – Rudy and Herman. Herman is in the middle; the guy on the right is unknown. The brothers were famous for their circus and sideshow act, where they were the first daredevils in America to speed on motorcycles at death-defying angles inside a round steel cage. Herman is my maternal great-grandfather. Thanks again to Photoshop and Neat Image for repairing this old photo.
Early in 1990, with our Digiview image digitizer connected to our Amiga 2000, we grabbed this photo of Uwe Schmidt (Atom Heart) on the left, Anton the skull, Caroline Engelhardt (to become Caroline Wise 4 years later), Olaf Finkbeiner, and that’s me, John Wise in the back row. This photo of the day prior to a recent scanning only existed on a piece of paper printed on a dot-matrix printer, the original file is lost in time. Photoshop and Neat Image helped in bringing this poor-quality image back to life.
An old friend, Uwe Hamm-Furholter, wrote me and sent this brochure for the Exground Filmfest held in Wiesbaden, Germany, for the past 18 years – he and I went to the first one back in 1988, and I got my clock cleaned by Ari Roussimoff following the Exground showing of his film Shadows in the City in 1990 or 1991. Uwe brought the likes of Nick Zedd to Germany to show his films, did some documentary work with Richard Kern, and has always had a liking for extreme films.
On the trail at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona for Las Noches de las Luminarias. The garden transforms into a holiday wonder – at least as far as this desert is concerned. There are half a dozen stands along the trails selling coffee, hot chocolate, wine, and soft drinks. We watched and listened to no less than eight musicians or groups as we strolled between the luminarias with their candles flickering. A woman playing harp greeted us at the front gate, and a barbershop quartet serenaded us and even made us laugh. Onlookers gathered around a Native American flutist in an Indian-style hut while the Scottsdale Bell Ringers drew a large crowd in the Patio Cafe. A cowboy sang songs of the old west, not to mention two jazz bands, mariachis, and more. It was a blast; we only wish we’d shown up at 5:30 when it all begins instead of coming in at 7:00. The luminarias are lit from 5:30 till 9:30, and quite a few weekend days are already sold out – well worth a visit.
This is me, John Wise, at my office in 1992 in Frankfurt, Germany. Caroline and I started producing record covers for Techno music in 1989 and eventually made many a t-shirt design, postcards, CD covers, magazine advertisements, posters, slides, and various other graphic designs, 3D modeling and animation, video, and multimedia stuff. We worked under different monikers, including:
Dweeb, Magic Donut, 4-Eyes…
…Optic Kiss, Kommunaggresion, Intrinsic Dimension, and…
…The Hippies. Prior to this, I did live concert documentary work for bands including…
…The Pixies, Nitzer Ebb, Dinosaur Jr, Front 242…
…Nirvana – (live in Hanau, Germany 1989),
The Sugarcubes, Psychic TV, Laibach, and about 100 other bands.