Mosaic Collage of Jerry Garcia

One of a Kind Framed Jerry Garcia Mosaic Collage | Etsy

Jerry Garcia one of a kind photo mosaic collage

This is a mosaic collage made from a total of 13 images of Jerry Garcia, 1-8×12 and 12-4×6 prints. I took the original photograph on Memorial Day 1995 in Portland, Oregon with a Nikon 8008 camera and a F/2.8 80-200mm Nikkor Zoom lens using Kodak TriX rated at 800 ISO and developed in HC110. After a print was made I hand painted it and rephotographed the finished image. Over the next fifteen years I was working on photo mosaics and in 2010 I came up with an idea and over the next few months I had archival prints made at my custom lab. After cutting them up and reasembling them on foam core using alternating 2 inch black core foam core squares giving the final image depth. I then framed it in a 22x30x 1 1/2 black museum frame, protected by plexiglass.

One of a Kind Framed Jerry Garcia Mosaic Collage | Etsy

ZZ Top 2007

ZZ Top Limited Edition 16×20 Canvas Print from 2007 | Etsy

ZZ Top Canvas Wrap 16c20

ZZ Top Limited Edition 16×20 Canvas Print from 2007 | Etsy

I shot ZZ Top in 2007 with my Nikon 8008 and Nikor F2.8 80-200 zoom lens using Fujicolor 800 ISO film.

Tom Petty 2002 Canvas Wrap

Tom Petty Canvas Wrap 16×20

I shot this at the Rose Garden Arena in Portland, Oregon in 2002 when Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were on the Last DJ tour. It was a fantastic concert and all the photographers got to stand at the foot of the stage for the entire show and photograph it. I shot six rolls of thirty six exposure color and black and white film. The canvas print is currently on the Etsy Art website at this link.

Tom Petty 2002 Limited Edition 16×20 Canvas Wrap | Etsy

Tom Petty Canvas Wrap 16×20 2002

Tom Petty 2002 Limited Edition 16×20 Canvas Wrap | Etsy

Derek Trucks

Derek Trucks 1999

Derek Trucks was born on June 8, 1979 in Jacksonville, Florida and is a nephew of the “Allman Brothers Band” founding drummer Butch Trucks. He began playing guitar when he was nine years old after picking up a guitar at a yard sale. His repertoire was inspired by guitarist Duane Allman, older blues artists like Howlin’ Wolf, jazz musicians and even Eastern Indian classical music. He started his first band “Derek and the Dominators” when he was twelve years old which became the “Derek Trucks Band” in 1997. Their eponymous first album was released the same year and in 1999 Out of Madness followed. The last year of the millennium was a busy one for Derek joined as he joined the “Allman Brothers Band” at the same time that he continued with his own band. He played with artists as varied as Bob Dylan, Stephen Stills and Joe Walsh and in 2006 he collaborated with Eric Clapton and JJ Cale on The Road To Escondido. After touring around the world as part of Eric Clapton’s band while still a member of the other two he performed at the 2007 “Crossroads Guitar Festival.” In 2007 Trucks combined his band with blues guitarist and singer Susan Tedeschi’s who he had been married to since 1999. In 2007 he was the youngest guitar player to be on Rolling Stones list of the top 100 guitar players. Over the decades he’s both released and collaborated on over forty albums including ten solo and four with the “Tedeschi Trucks Band.”

Derek Trucks – “Layla/Jam” July 4th 1993 – YouTube

Tedeschi Trucks Band 2019

Detroit Michigan was the Motor City

MC50: Portland, Oregon Gig Review – Blues Rock Review

Detroit Michigan 1994

I grew up in the Greater Detroit, Michigan area and other than serving two years in the army I lived there until a couple weeks before my twenty-fourth birthday when I moved to L.A. My friends and I would hang out in the the downtown black neighborhoods where illegal “blind pig” all night bars existed in peoples houses. My friend Jim Swartz connected with one of the guys that ran a “blind pig’ named Bill. It was on 12th Street and it had a bar, gambling, prostitution, drugs and whatever else you wanted that was illlegal. Even when I was in the army and came home on leave we would all go downtown to party. Then the July 1967 riot happened and a square mile of the city was decimated and that ended out hanging out in the ghetto. The riot happened only a block away from Bill’s place at another “Blind Pig.” Soldiers returning home from Vietnam were celebrating at one of the illegal bars and unfortunately the police arressted them. The idnignation of arresting the returning soldiers sparked retaliation by the crowd that gathered as they threw rocks and bottles at the police and then everything exploded. When I returned from my two years in the military the only time I went downtown it was to go to a concert at the Grande, Easttown, Roostertail, Cobo Hall or another venue.

Detroit Michigan at Dusk 1994

Bob Gersztyn, Books | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)

Joanna Connor Is Chicago’s Queen of Blues Rock

Joanna Connor 2003 Portland Oregon

Joanna Connor was born in 1962 in Brooklyn, New York but was raised by her mother in Worchester, Massachusetts. When she was seven years old her mother gave her a guitar and she immediately began to play it. By the time that she was in junior high school she formed a band. The band went on a hippie cross country road trip and stopped in Chicago where Joanna was blown away. A few years later the impression motivated her enough to move to Chicago in 1984 when she was twenty-four. Her musical influences came from her mom’s jazz and blues records while at the same time she attended performances by artists like Ry Cooder, Buddy Guy, Taj Mahal and Bonnie Raitt. By 1985 she became a member of Dion Peyton and the “43^rd Street Blues Band.” She shared the stage and received tips and encouragement from everyone from Buddy Guy, Larry McCray and Mike Wheeler to Junior Wells, Joe Bonamassa and Jimmy Page. She is a master of the slide guitar and uses her pinky finger for the slide which is a traditional technique employed by Robert Johnson to free up the fingers for complex picking when needed. In 1989 she released her first album Believe It on “Blind Pig Records.” Over the next three decades she released fourteen albums and in 2021 Joe Bonamassa produced her most recent one 2801South Indiana Avenue.

Joanna Connor – “I Feel So Good” – Official Music Video – YouTube

My Other Blog

The Transcendent Taxicab: In The Beginning

My Other Blog

The Transcendent Taxi Cab

The book that I wrote about driving a taxi was originally a blog and you can read the entire thing for free at the link above or go to Smashwords or Barns and Nobles to purchase a digital copy for $5.99.

Smashwords – The Transcendent Taxi Cab – a book by Bob Gersztyn

Smashwords

The Transcendent Taxi Cab by Bob Gersztyn | NOOK Book (eBook) | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)

Barnes and Nobles

U S Postal Service Elvis Presley Stamp Sale

Smashwords – Conversations With and About John Fahey – a book by Bob Gersztyn

U S Postal Service Window Line Clerk Selling Elvis Presley Stamps.

When I worked for the U S Postal Service before I retired in 2004 I took photographs of everything that happed in my office. This is from 1992 when they were choosing what photo to use for the new Elvis Presley stamp. It was a choice between either the Elvis of 1956 or 1974 and James L. Flick gave a third alternative of Elvis as he looks today nearly two decades after the kings death. Just as a side note, John Fahey AKA Blind Joe Death worked at the post office in the late 1950’s when he was attending school at the American University in Washington DC. Read about it in my book “Conversations With and About John Fahey” on Smashwords and at Barnes and Nobles.

Bob Gersztyn | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)

John Fahey is Blind Joe Death

Smashwords – Conversations With and About John Fahey – a book by Bob Gersztyn

Interviews With John Fahey and Friends

“Conversations With and About John Fahey” is comprised of 15 interviews. 8 with John and 7 with his friends along with a lot of photographs that I took of John as his personal photographer for three years at the end of his life.

Smashwords – Conversations With and About John Fahey – a book by Bob Gersztyn

The Transcendent Taxi Cab

Taxi Cab in Motion

The Transcendent Taxicab: In The Beginning

I drove a taxi cab on the night shift from 3:00 PM TO 3:00 AM three nights a week on weekends for nine years beginning on July 5, 2004. I just retired from the post office and wanted to work a few days a week doing something different. . It was a very enjoyable job that was sometimes surrealistic. Towards the end of my nine years my guts would be churning Friday as I prepared to got to work. I finally couldn’t take the insanity any more and quit after my last shift on St. Patricks Day in 2013. I wrote a journal the entire time and decided to turn my journal into a blog in December 2009 and did so for a year until December 2010. A year ago I published my blog in the form of a book on Smashwords which is also available at Barnes and Nobles.

Smashwords – The Transcendent Taxi Cab – a book by Bob Gersztyn

Taxi Cab Meter

The Transcendent Taxicab