Thank you for visiting CORRIDORS│An Educational Website in the Arts and History. Featuring My Photography and Videos.

Hi. My name is John P. Walsh and I live and work in the Greater Chicago area. With my duties as a writer and marketing communications specialist, I enthusiastically created this non-profit educational website in 2013. For each post, I look to select, create and post items of interest in this website’s 5 major areas—the fine (and popular) arts, performing arts, history, literature, and my photography & video—based on original research, field work, and reporting that hopefully you will find interesting, informative, useful, and even entertaining.

Educational website in the Arts and History.

CORRIDORS’ appearance—its educational purpose and communication mission—was formulated at the founding and developed in its first couple of months and years. In each post I look to provide original text and a variety of images, and reporting it with the sole purpose to share it with an audience whose interest is in subject matter specific to the Fine & Performing Arts, History, Literature & Photography and in an educationally enlightening way. My passion for the integrity of the image joined to original research, reporting, commentary and criticism for this educational purpose extends to all the topic areas’ posts. As an educational website CORRIDORS is intended to work as an expansive platform to present various information to a variety of visitors so they can easily find everything they need in its well-balanced and organized content.

Some ways to access content.

You can begin finding CORRIDORS’ content in a number of diverse ways such as:

●clicking a topic area at the top of the site for its menu of posts
● clicking in the side bar from the category list, monthly archives, tag block, or the site’s top posts & pages.
●typing in the search box.

Thank you for your visit today!

Visitors interested in the arts and history should find posts to enjoy on CORRIDORS. Like many people, I am passionate about these topic areas and their range of forms — from painting, sculpture, and architecture, to film, music, fashion, photography — and much more. I am also passionate about history and the written word. It is upon this basis that the website was founded and continues to build, deepen, and grow.

Living and working in Chicagoland. 

I grew up in Chicago and its suburbs. CORRIDORS is an extension and integral part of living in and with the culture and resources that are available in the U.S.’s third-largest metropolitan area (after New York City and Los Angeles). My interest in the fine arts, performing arts, history and literature is lifelong. This is not much of an exaggeration since I knew in the 5th grade in public school that, upon writing a paper on American History, I wanted to study History. Around the same time, reading and re-reading my first art history books, watching documentaries on TV, making museum visits, studying classical music and performing for public events in the school choir as well as, in a small role, my first community stage play were all experiences and interests that came to stick with me.

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

It is the coming together of my extensive theater background in school as well as professionally, teaching in high school and college, and working and innovating in the journalism and corporate communications field, that helped find expression for my immense curiosity and formed my research, writing and photography skills. My interest and experiences led to pursuing a Masters of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating in 2006. After that I taught Modern Art History (Nineteenth Century French Art) at Northwestern University from 2008-2010. These educational experiences, along with the many excellent art historians, writers, and artists that I met and formed friendships with inspired me directly to found and develop this non-profit arts, social science, and humanities educational website in 2013. I also have degrees in History and Theology from Quincy University, a small private and Catholic liberal arts college in the Midwest.

Favorite subjects for research and writing.

My research and writing in Art explores 19th and early 20th century modern art, particularly in France including its international movements (i.e., Impressionism; Expressionism; Symbolism) and artists’ biographies; in Music I write extensively on rock, folk, classical, and film music as well as artist biographies and industry trends; for Stage & Screen I write often about mainly American film and theater from the late 19th century to the present, including biographies and cultural impacts; in World History I produce work on subjects related to business. civil and human rights, U.S. and European politics and culture, and biographies.

Art.

Art is an area that involves visual analysis and historical and cultural interpretation. Its subject engages, understands and interprets several areas of knowledge including architecture and design, material culture, fashion, film and video, painting, sculpture, prints, photographs (and other works on paper) as well as performance and installation art so to identify its important forms of visual expression. Its subject matter extends from antiquity to the present and art objects that are researched and under comment and review are drawn from geographically diverse cultures around the globe.

Art is then a discipline that strives to understand works of art, architecture and design, among more, from a variety of perspectives, including original context of their making and reception to their circulation, collection, conservation, and display.

As culturally significant expressions, works of art may yield multiple meanings depending on the kinds of research and interpretive strategies that the art historian brings into play. These strategies might include consultation of original archives and philosophical and critical discourses as well as research into modes of history or formal analysis. Go to the page here: https://johnpwalshblog.com/art-history-art-reviews/.

From Leonardo da Vinci to Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch.

From the Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to today’s ultra-contemporary artwork I have been able to pursue research interests in modern and contemporary art and exhibition trends in league with a close study of current and historical aesthetics literature and imagery within the broader art world so to incorporate such items on this website.

With over 30 posts in Art, there are many facets of the subject to be explored including Paul Gauguin’s interlude in Paris between trips to Tahiti whose art expressed themes of savagery, mystery, darkness, androgyny, sensual melancholy, exoticism, and the hieratic in Savagery In Civilization: Paul Gauguin And His Tahiti-Inspired Graphic Work In Paris, 1893-1895. On May 2, 2019, the world remembered the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death. Da Vinci’s preparatory drawings for The Battle of Anghiari in Florence include subjects such as horses, riders, and combatants on the battlefield filled with emotion and atmospherics in what is arguably the Italian Renaissance artist’s most important public commission in On the 500th Anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death, a look at a masterpiece, the Battle of Anghiari, and its Fabled Competition with Michelangelo for the Laurel of Greatest High Renaissance Artist in Sixteenth-Century Italy.

The distinction between the fine arts and popular arts can be, often enough, challenging to precisely know since both areas include art forms such as dance, literature, music, theater, etc. It also seems that the fine and popular arts share overlapping content more and more each year. Historically, popular art is any art form created for, and received and appreciated in, the popular culture. This can include television, the internet, film, novels, music, advertising, and many other entertainments, media, objects, trends, and fads.

Music.

Music explores the history, culture, and critical mass of music and music-making. Within culture and by way of recorded works, there is the attempt to present and understand the composer(s), time period, style, and genre of different musics from folk, classical, choral and opera to rock, pop, rhythm & blues, and jazz and their various impacts. Go to the page here: https://johnpwalshblog.com/music/.

In a growing section of 9 posts, the Bee Gees’ working methods resulting in their multi-platinum 1977 soundtrack album is detailed in History of The Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love.” The First Hit for the 1977 film “Saturday Night Fever” still defines the Disco Age. The facts and legends of Ireland’s Brigid lead to the 19th century Irish folk song in a long line of Irish musical taste about forsaken love in The Origin, History, and Meaning of the Irish Folk Song “Bríd Óg Ní Mháille” (“Young Bridget O’Malley”). 

Stage & Screen.

Stage & Screen is an appreciation for the history of theatre and film and its styles, acting talent, producers and directors, and performance spaces that have made it great. Go to the page here: https://johnpwalshblog.com/film-history/.

In its 14 posts, Stage & Screen ranges from the early 20th century Broadway stage and rise of American celebrity in ETHEL BARRYMORE OF THE LEGENDARY AMERICAN ACTING FAMILY AND “CAPTAIN JINKS OF THE HORSE MARINES,” THE BROADWAY SHOW IN 1901 AT THE GARRICK THEATRE IN NEW YORK CITY THAT MADE HER A STAR to the 1950’s Hollywood career of stage actress, model and film star Grace Kelly in Hollywood Princess: Grace Kelly’s Modeling and Acting Career, 1946-1956. My own experiences in professional theater on stage and backstage works to provide additional perspective.

World History.

On CORRIDORS History is a common theme. There is Art History, Music History, Film History, World History, etc. World History is one of these significant areas for History. Go to the page here: https://johnpwalshblog.com/world-history/.

World History is looking at many parts of the world through the lens of historical activities and events as well as the biographies of important people. World History seeks to provide a general understanding of the framework of the past, to provide a basis for comprehending the dynamic forces that shape events, and to develop a sense of perspective with which to view the trends of the present world. From the resistance to tyranny in Germany during World War II in Long Live Freedom! Hans and Sophie Scholl and The White Rose in Germany (1942-1943) to the meeting of Civil Rights leaders with President Kennedy following the 1963 March on Washington in The March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963: an account of the 72-minute post-march meeting of 8 civil rights leaders with President Kennedy at the White House. to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther KIng, Jr.’s Chicago Freedom Movement for open housing, jobs, and educational opportunity for African-Americans in mid1960’s Chicago in PART 3 – Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Chicago Freedom Movement: the Marches and Rallies of Summer 1966, there are historical accounts of the people’s pursuit, often at high personal cost, for human rights and social justice.

In its 21 posts, World History looks at many parts of the world through a lens of historical activities, events, and biographies of significant people. It explores many aspects and facets of human living and experience through the ages. It ranges from the founding and development of the McDonald’s fast-food global franchise by Ray Kroc in Des Plaines, Illinois in Ray Kroc’s very first McDonald’s franchise restaurant started in 1955 in Des Plaines, Illinois, is slated to meet the wrecking ball to an indepth-look at the eruption of a stratovolcano in Washington State that led to the most massive explosion and landslide in recorded North American history in History and reportage of the amazing natural news event of May 18, 1980: the eruption of Mount St. Helens, Washington.

Quotations.

Quotations is an extension and application of the arts and history mission of CORRIDORS. It is a place to access a wide range of voices within the parameters of the site’s educational purview and views broadly any impactful written work that engages and expresses the same. One particular objective for the section is to make accessible certain classic works of literature.

Quotations includes recognized authors as well as less known writers and speakers. Texts can be national and international, in English and in translation, and ranging from non-fiction such as biography, memoir, essay, letters, diaries, etc., to prose fiction, drama, or poetry.

In and with these diverse forms and authors, Quotations seeks passages to the integration of learning, knowledge, and creativity based on a wide corpus of written works as well as in their historical, social, and intellectual contexts. Go to the page here: https://johnpwalshblog.com/quotations/.

My photography’s major areas of interest – Architecture & Design; Art; Nature; and Street.

Before the site’s founding, I had been pursuing digital photography. I had taken photographs on film – often on my travels to 45 of the 50 states, Latin America, the Pacific islands, Canada, and Europe – making the transition to digital photography at the turn of the 21st century. With the full-fledged onset of the digital age—one of the most exciting periods of change and innovation to be living in— an unprecedented opportunity became obvious to shoot quality digital photographs and with the ability to display them on the internet to an appreciative audience. Photography-Architecture & Design, Photography-Art, Photography-Nature, and Photography-Street are the four areas where a growing photographic portfolio is found. Go directly to the pages here:

Photography – Architecture & Design.

Photography – Art.

Photography – Nature.

Photography – Street.

What I look for in my photography.

There are aspects about my photography experiences to relate– such as that the camera is an exhilarating instrument for and of which to engage the world as well as the photographer within–although it is the collection of still and moving images that matter more than words. Photography for me is the delicacy and colors of a flower garden and the powerful drama of nature’s elements; the expanse of today’s American roads; the street’s sometime trepidation but also wit, whimsy, beauty, love, and surprise; fashion’s style and statement; the often gaudy display of human intelligence and creativity, as well as history, manifest in architecture and design, whether public or private, commercial or residential, etc. These are some subjects for my continuing passion in taking photographs in the 2020’s– and looking beyond. 

Thank You!

Thank you  for visiting CORRIDORS│An Educational Website in the Arts and History. Featuring My Photography and Videos. Have a great day and I look forward to hearing from you.