WRITTEN IN THE STARS
It’s a simple concept that started from a good place.
The world was on fire. Covid had come to raise hell in the spring, seemingly died down in the summer (a phase I think we often forget about) and came raging back in the fall. August became living hell for Cedar Rapidians with the arrival of the Derecho, a land-locked hurricane that blew over half the trees in town and left it ravaged and powerless. But not power-less, as the community showed.
This first image, a CR landscape taken from the top of the Iowa Realty building, was a collaboration with Anna Praegitzer and was the basis for a print giveaway for two local charities, post-Derecho and mid-Covid. I ran the giveaway on my Instagram account, with help from several local businesses to boost the signal, and it ended up being wildly successful.
The idea for the image - to weave the word HOPE into the stars - was really resonant with CR at the time; it could not seemingly get any worse there. But they banded together, CR Strong, to raise thousands of dollars through my Instagram over the span of a few days, just by sending me screenshots.
That idea, the one for the giveaway rather than the image itself, is what I’m most proud of. I didn’t have to touch a dollar. I just provided two links to choose from: one for The Catherine McAuley Center, and the other for Horizons Meals on Wheels, and all people had to do was send me a screenshot of their donation receipt. The prints were done by SPS (RIP) and the legwork was done by my pops (forever grateful).
For Part Two, just this past summer, I tried to mimic both the image and the success of the giveaway. That was a win/win. Well this time, I was also hoping to clear some old prints out of my stash in the Need Pizza basement, so I went for the win/win/win.
Again a collaboration with Anna (she did the stars for both 1 and 2) and again with the aspirational four letter word, I posted it with similar directions - except this time any local charity will do. I then let them choose a print from the basement.
It was successful enough - hell even just one person would have been better than none - but not nearly like the first one, and probably for a myriad of reasons; I don’t have as much of a pull on Instagram anymore, both because it’s less popular than ever but the algorithm has changed so drastically that your followers, the people who requested to see your work every time you post it, often miss it altogether. Between that and there being no real dire or urgent cause - 2024 is humming along a lot nicer than 2020, which is a good thing. I wish it would have been a little more popular, nonetheless.
Part three, which I just took recently on a quick trip to the midwest, veered course. I simply wanted to keep the concept going - an aspirational message, perferably 4 letters, written in the stars. This time I featured myself on my own song, doing the stars myself, all in Lightroom actually.
