Soul of Athens

When I decided to come to Ohio University as the Knight Fellow last year, I generally received one of two reactions: envy or head scratching.

Why did I do it? Well, to create work like The Soul Of Athens which launched today. I produced the content for the creativity section.

I shot and edited The Art of Coal Country about how Nelsonville, Ohio was saved by art. It’s my vision of how a typical newspaper feature story can look on the web.

Soul of Athens is our attempt to look at where “merlot meets moonshine,” an multimedia examination of Athens County and our small University town in the foot hills of Appalachia.

This is a class project, totally created by students but the brainchild of the amazing Zach Wise , the 29-year-old visiting professional who has guided it, kept us on track and constantly tweaked and prodded us into the best we could do in 8 weeks.

Zach pretty much allowed us to generate and create and build every bit, from concept to design to code to content to text to viral marketing. Another web guru, Brian Storm flew in from NYC to be our second guiding light.

What was most interesting for me was to be involved as a producer and generate pieces that I did not shoot myself (though I did edit them all.)

For Harmony in Two Parts , a story on the creative process between 2 musicians, I generated the idea and worked with M.K.Smith, who photographed and recorded the piece. I made the edit

For PassionWorks a story about an eye-opening art studio for developmentally disadvantaged adults, and The Carver of Coolville Ridge, a story about David Hostetler, an internationally recognized sculptor who lives nearby, I found work already in progress and matched it to ideas I generated. So I have now also learned the fine art of begging and pleading for rights and cooperation. I re-edited the pieces for the web.

And it’s pretty much what I came here to learn. I couldn’t be happier. Love to hear what you think.