Oak Park Education Foundation

First graders in Ms. Espana's class at Lincoln learn yoga as part of their study of the weather. As they salute the sun, strengthen their arms in rainbow pose and hiss like cobras, they are also experiencing the physical and emotional benefits of yoga. Their sessions with yoga instructor Kim Vulinovic are provided by the Oak Park Education Foundation's Art Start program

Taylor - Tam Tam Mandingue Professor, percussionist, educator, performer, composer - Oak Parker





Specializing in the West African djembe and dounun drums Taylor lives his art, leaving the corporate computer world to share his knowledge and love of percussion.
He teaches, performs, imports, sells and repairs drums while teaching classes and workshops in Oak Park and around the Chicago area. He invented the DruMeditation, combining drumming with meditation to create a powerful healing experience. I've added Taylor to my Oak Parkers project because of his deep involvement in what he does and his willingness to share by teaching both adults and children.

Have a Heart

Last night I joined a full house at The School of the Art Institutes's Ballroom in support of West Suburban PADS, Have a Heart Gala.

All photos from the event can been seen here

Mann School Dance

Above is a mini slide show with a few of the winter wonderland photos, click here for a link to all the photos from The Mann School Dance Friday night.

Jill Salzman

Jill Salzman - The Founding Mom, speaker, author, musician - Oak Parker






For those of you who know Jill, and most mom entrepreneurs in the Oak Park/Chicago area do, you'll know having Jill sit on her sofa and smile at the camera wasn't really going to work. I kept thinking girl power (women power, but that sounds too serious) when I was thinking about how to photograph her. Maybe a group of women in business holding her up, mmmmm, her doing some kind of power move, flexing her mussels, maybe, let’s play with that idea. The 'We can do it' poster came to mind, so I looked up a little history.

The "We Can Do It!" image was commissioned by Westinghouse not for recruitment during the war but to exhort already-hired women to work harder. During World War II, the "We Can Do It!" poster was not connected to the 1942 song "Rosie the Riveter", nor to the widely seen Norman Rockwell painting called Rosie the Riveter that appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. But it was much later used to promote feminism, self-empowerment, campaign promotion, and advertising.

It's seemed fitting, Jill pushes all us moms in business to work a little harder, self-empowerment she definitely promotes, so I dropped by last Sunday morning and we had a laugh and took some photos while or girls played. I don't think we needed to copy the photo to get the idea, it's the 2013 version.

You can check out her current adventure The Founding Moms and all that goes with it, 'Found It' the book, 'The Founding Kit' over at foundingmoms.com

Food Patriots

As a sponsor of the One Earth Film Festival 2013 I will be attending many of the upcoming events over the March1-3 weekend. Last night I photographed at a rough cut of Jeff Spitz film 'Food Patriots'




to see a list of all the events and films that will be shown around Oak Park, River Forest, Forest Park area in the next month click here.

Jeff at the event to chat with everyone after the movie, he even let the young food patriots check out his cameras and do a bit of filming.

A few of our local Oak Park/Chicago food patriots were in the audience, Jenny Jocks Stelzer from The Sugar Beet Co-op, and Angela Taylor community garden activist from Chicago's west side, check out another doc all about her garden here