It's about Love.
It's about Community.
It's about Healing.
The heart-lifting effort to collect 10,000 photographs of the affectionately-inclined from around the world.
Only one more week before our 5-year Anniversary Celebration on Saturday, April 30, 2011, we’ve cut the ticket price in half. Whoo Hoo!Come party with The Smooch! Project for only $50 per person! We’ll be celebrating the phenomenal growth of The Smooch! Project since it’s humble beginnings PLUS we’ve collected an incredible array of amazing items for our guests to peruse and bid on during our auction.
The evening begins with a social hour at 5pm. Dinner will be offered at 6pm. There’ll be lots of items arrayed for your bidding pleasure during the silent auction, with entertainment provided by local celebrities Viva & Jerry Beck (of Viva & Jerry’s Country Western Music Videos fame) starting at 6:30pm. At 7pm, our guests will be treated to a behind-the-scenes overview and future goals of The Smooch! Project (offered by moi),followed by a poignant presentation by Dawn Mikkelson, independent filmmaker of Emergence Pictures, about her next documentary — featuring The Smooch! Project and appropriately entitled SMOOCH.
But what I really wanted to tell you about today were all the goodies we’ve got lined up for the silent and live auction! At 8pm, for our live auction, guests will be invited to bid for the grand prize of the evening: 7 days atCasa Sirena, a beautiful boutique hotel on a Caribbean island only a 20-minute ferry ride from Cancun. Here’s a video showing you what it’s like there. Breathtakingly beautiful!
The grand prize details: The offer is for 7 nights accommodations, double-occupancy, in any available room in the hotel. Full breakfast and happy hour cocktails are included (Mon. – Sat.) Offer expires Oct. 31, 2011. (No exceptions) Airfare, airport transfers, and ferry to the island not included.
But before that, from 5 to 8pm, there will be oodles of other items waiting for guests to bid on during our silent auction. Here’s a partial list:
This is where we’ll be on
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Sheraton Minneapolis Midtown
2901 Chicago Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55407
(Adjacent to the Midtown Global Market)
Think Caribbean. Think Food. Think Fun. Tickets are NOW $50 per person. Upon arrival, our guests will receive a $20 gift certificate toward the purchase of a matted, ready-to-frame print of their choice selected from The Smooch! Project Archive (or their private gallery) and personally signed by the photographer. And the food! Make your own Mexican feast of tacos with all the freshest ingredients, topped off with the traditional Churros dessert. Yum! Yum! Yum!
This event has limited seating: Don’t miss out on the celebration . . . and an opp to get a great deal on lots of items, including a 7-day Caribbean vacation! Reserve your spot by ordering a ticket NOW!
A Smooch! Project volunteer came up with the BRILLIANT idea of creating a short video of our 5-year Anniversary dinner hosts, Jerry & Viva Beck (of local cable TV fame for the 20-year run of Viva & Jerry’s Country Music Videos), speaking on behalf of The Smooch! Project. (Thanks, Rebecca L.!) I thought I would give it a try with my little Flip video camera. Below is the hilarious result. Have a listen!
As noted on earlier blog entries,Viva & Jerry are going to be hosting the 5-year Smooch! Project Anniversary Dinner / Silent Auction Fundraiser on Saturday, April 30. The Smooch! is growing up and looking to move out into the world to collect images outside of Minnesota. Your support would be most appreciated. Please come if you can! It promises to be an unforgettable evening of food & fun. Here’s the details:
Saturday, April 30, 2011
The party begins at 5. Dinner at 6.
Sheraton Minneapolis Midtown
2901 Chicago Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55407
(Adjacent to the Midtown Global Market)
Tickets are $50. Limited seating. To order, click here.
Hope to see you on April 30!
Affectionately yours,
–Bonnie
OMG! OMG! OMG! I asked and they said, “Yes!” I just LOVE these two! Viva and Jerry Beck are extremely well-known hereabouts in Minnesota. They should be! They just finished taping episode #936 of their very ownViva & Jerry’s Country Music Videos, a silly, hokey, entirely enchanting television romp that ranges from slapstick corny humor to poignant country music videos. It’s amazing, I don’t even LIKE country western music (forgive me, Jerry!) but these two manage to make it entertaining even for country music-impaired people like myself. To get an idea of their entertaining effort, here’s a link to their State Fair Special show.
And now, these two staunch Smooch! supporters are going to bring their humor, their music, and their immensely beautiful hearts to entertain our guests during the Fifth Anniversary Smooch! Project Dinner Party / Fundraiser on Saturday, April 30. What hilarious fun we’re going to have!
If you are on the fence about attending this event, I’d recommend getting your tickets now! Seating is very limited and we anticipate a big rush when the news gets out.
Click here to order your tickets.
Click here to learn more about the anniversary event.
I’ll look forward to seeing your smiling faces at the party! Whoo hoo!
For the first time in it’s five-year history, The Smooch! Project is now offering hand-signed 5×7-inch prints. These are PERFECT gifts for your sweetie, your mom, your dad. Especially designed for whomever you love and those who love you.
Every print is corner-mounted on an acid-free foamcore backing and framed by a quality white core acid-free matboard in your choice of black or white. Protected in a resealable, crystal clear archival envelope, your signed and matted print will arrive ready to be placed in an 8×10-inch frame.
How sah-weet! And how easy! Click here for more details and to order. Be sure to place your order in time for Mother’s Day, coming up on May 8. (Father’s Day is June 19.)
TWO BIG DAYS. TWO BIG EVENTS.
MARK YOUR CALENDARS!
Please plan to join us as we celebrate the 5-year anniversary of The Smooch! Project.
Please join us for an internationally-themed anniversary celebration dinner. The future of The Smooch! Project is world-wide and to kick-off our new vision for the future, we’re teaming up with the Midtown Global Market to offer an unforgettable evening of food & fun. There’ll be a multitude of gifts from around the world offered at our silent auction. Here’s the details:
Saturday, April 30, 2011
The party begins at 5. Dinner at 6.
Sheraton Minneapolis Midtown
2901 Chicago Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55407
(Adjacent to the Midtown Global Market)
Think Caribbean. Think Food. Think Fun. Tickets are $50 per person. Upon arrival, our guests will receive a $20 gift certificate toward the purchase of a matted, ready-to-frame print of their choice selected from The Smooch! Project Archive (or their private gallery) and personally signed by the photographer. And the food! Make your own Mexican feast of tacos with all the freshest ingredients, topped off with the traditional Churros dessert. Yum! Yum! Yum!
The evening will also include a very special guest: The woman who gave the photographer the all important first smooch that began this epic effort to collect 10,000 photographs from around the world.
There will be lots of amazing deals: Beautiful & useful auction items gathered from around the world. Our top auction prize: A 7-day vacation at Casa Sirena, a beautiful six-room boutique hotel on a Caribbean island just a short 20-minute ferry ride from Cancun. [The details: The offer is for 7 nights accommodations, double-occupancy, in any available room in the hotel. Full breakfast and happy hour cocktails are included (Mon. - Sat.)Offer expires Oct. 31, 2011. (No exceptions) Airfare, airport transfers, and ferry to the island not included.]
This event has limited seating: Don’t miss out on the celebration . . . and an opp to get a great deal on lots of items, including a 7-day Caribbean vacation! Reserve your spot by ordering a ticket NOW!
Can you believe it? We’ve scheduled our 100th Smooch! shoot! We’ve even placed it on the exact same spot where the very first public Smooch! shoot was held in April 2006. Smooch! history in the making and we’re so excited! If you haven’t yet had an opportunity to participate in The Smooch! Project (or would like to ‘refresh’ your existing archive image, this is the shoot you won’t want to miss. Here’s the details:
Sunday, May 1, 2011
The Cosmopolitan Building
Party Room
Noon to 8pm
250 East 6th Street
St. Paul (Lowertown), MN 55101
(Concurrent with the Spring St. Paul Art Crawl)
This is a FREE event. No reservations required. First come, first served. All affectionately-inclined humans welcome. Handicapped-accessible. Sorry, no pets are allowed at this event.
I’ll look forward to seeing all your smoochy faces there!
Talk aboutGREAT timing! When chocolatier Mary Leonard, owner of Twin Cities-based Chocolat Celeste, approached me a few weeks ago to inquire whether I would consider partnering with her to offer customized Smooch! chocolates, I was immediately interested. Mary has a well-deserved reputation for creating incredibly delectable delicacies for the chocolate connoisseur. The long-term possibilities for The Smooch! Project were, well, a very sah-weet thing to consider!
We agreed to give the idea a test run. With February just around the corner, there was no time to develop custom Smooch! Project artwork. Luckily, Mary came up with a perfectly smoochy solution: Huge, hot pink lips on a dark chocolate bon bon. Each one is a little bit of heaven designed to melt on your tongue. Marvelous! And just in time for Valentine’s Day!
In celebration of their new alliance with The Smooch! Project,BETWEEN FEB. 1-14,Chocolat Celeste will donate 10% of all sales of these beautiful and delectable Smooch! chocolates to support our effort. How totally sweet is THAT?!?
There are two ways to support the Smooch! by purchasing these lovely, amazingly delectable custom chocolates:
Remember: to help support the Smooch!, please place your order between Feb 1-14. Try them, you’ll like them!
Our next Smooch! shoots are scheduled at our Smoochy friend Chocolat Celeste, 652 Transfer Road, St. Paul, MN. Please join us for two creative and unique Valentine’s Day Celebrations:
Date Night Smooch!: Friday, Feb 4, from 3-7pm. Enjoy a taste of chocolate and wine, shop for your Valentine gifts, and participate in The Smooch! Project.
Saturday Chocolate with a Smooch!: Saturday, Feb 5, from 10am-5pm. For friends, couples, and small dogs. Enjoy chocolate and Valentine shopping for those you love.
Can’t make it but want to participate in The Smooch! Project? We’ve got more smoochy opportunities coming up. Check the calendar at the right.
This Smooch! Archive photo, Mary luvs Oshea, illustrates a major theme underlying The Smooch! Project effort: That amazing human ability to generate forgiveness and reconciliation. The story of Mary Johnson and Oshea Israel is a hugely compelling one, but there is no need for me to tell it here. You can hear it for yourself by checking out the intro trailer for the new film about The Smooch! Project (appropriately entitled SMOOCH) under development. Watch it and you’ll find out just how remarkable these two people are — and how surprising their relationship. Would you be able to forgive the person who murdered someone you loved? Personally, I am not certain I could but I am inspired by the fact that it is possible, because Mary found a way to do it. Mary and Oshea have begun sharing their remarkable story of reconciliation and healing with others through a ministry-based organization called From Death to Life, which welcomes all mothers dealing with the loss of murdered children.
The story I wanted to share today is about another member of From Death to Life that I photographed that day for The Smooch! Project. Angel Cradle has no relationship with the man who murdered her son Duane. When we first met to plan the Smooch! shoot, she asked if she could bring her granddaughter. “Of course, of course,” I assured her with a smile. Two days before the shoot, she emailed me to say she had changed her mind. “Would it be OK if I brought the urn containing my son Duane and smooched that instead?” she wrote. “Of course, of course,” I replied, as my heart suddenly felt far too small for the chest it was sitting in. What a beautiful gesture. What a poignant photo, as you can see here.
Angel and I worked hard together to capture this image, entitled Angel luvs Duane (deceased). The beautiful inscribed metal urn containing her son’s ashes was quite heavy, but Angel managed to heft it with grace. The lighting typically used in Smooch! shoots created glaring reflections. Resolving these technical challenges required two separate photo sessions. Angel was very accommodating. During our time together, she told me about her son and the circumstances of his death. That was hard, too, but we managed to find some ease as we struggled to capture an acceptable photo. “Did Duane cause you trouble when he was growing up?” I asked. Angel gave me a puzzled look. “Because he’s still doing it now!” I said, and we both lightly laughed. It was challenging for Angel to speak about Duane. Even though it had been several years since he died, thoughts of that loss still bring her much pain. I was greatly struck by Angel’s willingness to share her story, her home, her time with me. It’s people like her, like Oshea, like Mary, who are literally demonstrating to the rest of us how to become a better human. More compassionate. More generous. More forgiving. And, ultimately, more happy, despite the challenges that life throws our way. I was blessed to meet these remarkable people.
How lucky The Smooch! Project is to have captured the interest of award-winning filmmaker Dawn Mikkelson! You can find out more about her work at her company website, Emergence Pictures. As you might imagine, Dawn gets a lot of film ideas pitched her way. But making a movie requires a years-long commitment. So how does she choose which idea she’s gonna go with? By her personal litmus test. Dawn knows she’s found a personally-compelling film idea when, in her words, “I wake up at 3am in the morning and obsess about it and have dreams about it!” You can hear her discuss her background, creative focus, and her enthusiasm for the new SMOOCH film in her 10,000 Fresh Voices interview for community radio KFAI. (While you’re there, you can also listen to my smoochy KFAI interview here, where you’ll also hear from three members of the 2010 Smooch! Project Dream Team.)
February is, of course, an important month in Smoochland! We’ve decided to offer two open-to-the-public Smooch! shoots — details are in the calendar to the right. If you’ve missed past opportunities to participate in The Smooch! Project and have a hankering to publicly smooch a loved one, now’s your chance!
In 2010, 15 amazing people made an ongoing commitment to contribute time and energy to The Smooch! Project. This was The Smooch! Project Dream Team, a remarkable group of individuals who shared the dream of collecting 10,000 images from around the world. Dreamer Joanne McGibbon, shown above being smooched by her son, Brian, was on the team in 2010. You can read her Smooch! Project Hero story here.
All 2010 Dreamers agreed to contribute an average of two hours per month (or 24 hours over one year) to help out in a wide variety of ways. And — WOW! — help they did, as you’ll see by the list of the individual Dreamer contributions at the end of this post. 2010 was a really great and productive year.
Last month, I asked every Dreamer whether they wished to continue supporting the Smooch! in 2011. The bar was being raised: Dream Team members were now being asked to provide four hours per month (or 48 hours over one year). The happy result: 11 Dreamers from 2010 agreed to continue their work in 2011.Three members asked to remain on the update list as “Honorary Dreamers,” meaning they wanted to keep up-to-date on the behind-the-scenes Smooch! activities and would serve in an advisory capacity.
I am so amazed at the draw this project has on people! I asked the Dreamers what motivated them to support the project long term. Dreamer Karen Van Wert replied, “I believe that one person can change the world. The Smooch Project is one person’s dream to make the world a better place and I want to be a part of that effort.” Dreamer Soup (Sue) Daugherty said, “I believe that The Smooch! Project is the closest thing to world peace that I will see in my lifetime. Not that I wouldn’t love world peace of course . . . But hey, I’m 54! The Smooch — LOVE. COMMUNITY. HEALING. What’s more important than that?” The Dream Team is a remarkable group of people. I am a very lucky photographer. Truly.
We’re looking for new Dreamers for 2011. Do you have an interest in joining the team? The more people we have working on this effort, the sooner we accomplish the goal: Collecting 10,000 images of the affectionately-inclined from around the world. Your help would be so greatly appreciated. To indicate your interest, simply send an email to me at photogirl@thesmoochproject.com. I’ll look forward to hearing from you!
In the meantime, check out the list of 2010 generous people who served on the Dream Team last year . . .
Becky Pelant: Data entry
Betsy Altheimer: Development & fundraising coach
Glen Booth: Photoshop wizard
Joanne McGibbon: Promotion (Art-o-Mat entries)
Judith James: Fundraising, grantwriting, story editing
Karen Van Wert: Photo assistant, domestic Smooch! shoot development
Lee Wilcox: Facebook and market research
Linda Crawford: Editorial advisor, fundraising
Louisa Hext: Community Bridge Builder, International Smooch! shoot development
Patricia Danielson: Corporate sponsorship development
Randee Baron: Postcard collation, Smooch! shoot manager
Soup (Sue) Daugherty: Travel planning, event planning, fundraising
Suzanne Joyce: Facebook development, data management, research
Tamra Sharp: Office management, fundraising
Vanessa Wilson: Smooch! shoot manager, HR & business advisor
We were totally thrilled to schedule a private Smooch! shoot with the internationally-known Playing for Change (PFC) band while they were here in Minneapolis last month. Their musical vision: to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world — a mission The Smooch! Project whole-heartily shares. PFC has developed a huge international following for good reason: A beautiful message beautifully presented. They have been a role model for us for several years. We want The Smooch! Project to be like them when we grow up! How awesome it was to meet and spend some time with these inspiring people.
Above, PFC band member Peter Bunetta is being smooched by PFC roadie / photographer Lindsay Fishman. More PFC archive pics from this shoot can be seen in The Smooch! Project Archive. Check them out here.
During the shoot, several PFC band members came forward to participate but had no handy partners to smooch. No problem! Trusty members of The Smooch! Project Dream Team (our awesome team of dedicated volunteers) were sooo happy to step up to the challenge! The result: Within the Smooch! archive, you’ll see Ilon Ba (PFC electric guitar) smooching Dreamer Patricia Danielson. You’ll also find Grampa Elliot (PFC vocals / harmonica) getting a smooch from Dreamer Louisa Hext. The Smooch! / PFC archive collection is completed by a photo of Clarence Bekker (PFC vocals / acoustic guitar) being smooched by his PFC roadie / sound tech friend, Melissa Britton. As is usually the case, everybody left their Smooch! shoot smiling. Later that evening, The Smooch! team all sat down to a wonderful concert by this amazing group of talented performers. It was quite an amazing day for The Smooch! Project.
PFC had so much fun, they decided to write about us on the PFC blog,followed by a mention on the PFC Facebook page. That was sooo sah-weet of them! Their doing so introduced The Smooch! Project to more than 170,000 PFC followers from all over the world. We are so grateful to this remarkable group of people for their love and support. Perhaps someday The Smooch! Project will be in a position to return such a great favor. Until then, we can only offer our simple, heartfelt thanks to this wonderful organization. This, plus a great big shout-out: PFC ROCKS!
Which now provides a great segue to our next story . . . .
Mucho thanks to all our Smoochy supporters of 2010
Where do we begin? So many people contributed time, energy, expertise (and — Wow! — sometimes even money!) toward our effort to collect 10,000 images from around the world. Last August, we tallied up all the Smooch! Project Heroes, those open-hearted people who have volunteered over the last four years in support of this effort. All told, the Heroes list exceeded 110 people! Amazing. Even now, the Heroes list continues to grow. We love our Smooch! Project Heroes!
From the Heroes group rise The Smooch! Project Dream Team: Those lovely souls who stepped up once to volunteer and then decided to stick around for awhile. The Dreamers share the vision of collecting 10,000 photographs from around the world. Dreamers form the inner circle of support for this entire effort. Without them, The Smooch! Project could grow only slowly. In 2010, fourteen Dreamers contributed a considerable amount of time and energy toward this effort. The amazing growth of The Smooch! Project is a direct result of the effort of these individuals. Amazingly, almost all of the 2010 Dreamers have once again committed to working on this project for yet another year. These people are a blessing for The Smooch! Project and we are lucky, lucky, lucky to have their support. Thanks so much, Dreamers! A great big smooch to each and every one of you.
Finally, there are the 1,600+ people on the Smooch! email list plus our 260+ Smooch! Facebook Fans. Yup, our group of smoochy supporters is growing and it’s all because of people like YOU. A great big, heart-felt thank you to each and every one of you for your ongoing interest, help and support. We very much appreciate having you along for this exciting ride. Hold on to your seats! 2011 holds amazing promise for The Smooch! Project.
A great and happy new year to all!
Scott Nichols loves art, especially photography. At least, that’s what I recall him telling me almost four years ago when he called me to talk about The Smooch! Project. Scott is also the News Editor for the Eastside Review, aweekly community newspaper covering a Saint Paul, Minnesota neighborhood. At the time, I was living in the downtown neighborhood called Lowertown, which was included in Scott’s coverage area. He had heard of our project and wanted to do a story. It ended up becoming much more than that.
The Fall 2006 St. Paul Art Crawl was coming up and The Smooch! Project was going to be a part of it. Scott was planning to include the upcoming shoot in his next issue. Hooray, I remember thinking. That would be cool. Then he also proposed what I thought was a brilliant idea (IMHO): Why not invite Eastside Review readers to attend the shoot and feature their Smooch! Archive photos and personal stories in later issues of the paper. Wow. Didn’t I say BRILLIANT? Needless to say, I was totally thrilled.
Over the next three months — 9 issues in all – photos and stories about The Smooch! Project appeared within the pages of Scott’s newspaper. For a project just completing its first year of growth, this coverage was a tremendous boost and very much appreciated. Scott and I occasionally kept in touch for another year but this fell away when I moved to Minneapolis, outside of his newspaper’s coverage area. The Smooch! Project continued to grow.
Now I am working my way back through the collected archive, as I gather and prepare the images to upload onto The Smooch! Project website. Last week, as I was completing more archive photos gathered in 2008, I came across this one:
I had set up a Smooch! shoot at the 2008 Stone Arch Bridge Festival of the Arts, always held during Father’s Day weekend in the Minneapolis. Among the many people I met and photographed during that two-day event, one of them stood out. Here is an image of Scott Nichols, being smooched by his lovely wife, Amy. This was the first time I had ever met this man and to also meet his beautiful family was a real bonus. They were out on a weekend family outing and had no idea that they were going to stumble over The Smooch! Project that day. Now that the project was no longer a subject for his newspaper, Scott was free to become part of a project he had once only written about.
The image, Amy luvs Scott, has been uploaded to the website and is now part of The Smooch! Project Archive online, where it belongs. I was really happy to finally meet him and glad that he found the opportunity to become part of the project. His coverage of this heart-lifting effort to collect 10,000 images of people showing affection to someone they love was an important part of our early years. I have not forgotten and to this day, I remain very grateful for his interest and support.
There is still much more work to be done to complete the current archive. At the moment, I have completed my work on only one of the two days from that shoot but I hope to complete all of the Stone Arch Bridge Festival images soon. My original goal was to finish our work on the images already collected here in Minnesota BEFORE we headed out on our first Smooch! Project road trip. Not gonna happen. We’re about 75 percent there: currently 740 of almost 1,100 images are now online. But — exciting news: We are leaving for . . . .
In less than a week, we will be embarking on the very first (and very exciting, of course!) Smooch! Project road trip. We’ve selected Detroit for several reasons, the primary one being that we consider this city to be ground zero for the financial challenges we have all be facing here in the United States. Hopelessness and senseless violence is a daily occurrence there. We think The Smooch! Project can help. We’ll only be within the city for a couple of days but we plan to connect with as many people on the ground as we can to prepare for a later return trip to begin a larger, more focused effort. We’ll be holding at least one shoot to collect a few representative images as well and come back home. Then we’ll have everything we need to write a rock-solid grant proposal. We believe the transformative imagery of The Smooch! Project has the power to heal a community. If our work there can break the cycle and stop even one violent episode, it will be entirely worth the effort. If you’re not on our mailing list to get the updates on our progress, you should be! It’s easy to do. The signup form is in the right hand column of this blog.
More stories to come . . .
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