The Color of Sound

I made this movie about 17 years (I was an artist and producer). I included a description below from 2020 when we released this movie. ENJOY!

Artists Jamie Danz, Scott Ehrisman, Eyob Mergia and Hope Happeny

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, it took over 13 years to put this project out there. I get it.

I could go into long rants about why that is, but to tell you the truth, I mostly forgot.

I also want to remind people this was a first attempt at something locally. We all did not know what the Hell we were doing, but we all knew what we were passionate about, visual art and music.

I think the idea was cooked up one day while hanging out with Eyob. I had done a couple ‘Art of Jazz’ shows at the Touch of Europe (painting while music played) and people really dug it. So Eyob says to me, “Why not film it?”

Okay.

So we pitched the idea to a videographer friend Chris who worked at a local TV station at the time, she was cool with it. She recruited some of her colleagues to help with the filming.

And I have to give props to Chris, I think she had to go thru 25 hours of footage to get this down to 1 hour. I believe there was 5 cameras for 5 hours.

It’s certainly not a Warhol film. But it was a nice experiment. All or most of the paintings sold, I think there was 14. The main one I believe with the reclined torso is in the bathroom at Zandbroz. And I remember admiring it one day while dropping the kids off at the pool.

I also want to thank our sound engineer, Dave Scarborough, I often tell people the audio from this is a masterpiece in itself. I have the full 5 hours on CD. At the time, these were the finest Jazz and Blues musicians in the city (if not the state), some of them still are, and I think this is more of film about their extraordinary talents than a bunch of hooligans painting.

Sandra and James were also extremely accommodating in letting us use the basement of the Harvestor building. When I asked them if we could do it there, they pretty much said ‘Cool’. They used to own the Riverwalk Cafe which featured local musicians which is now the Market, you know that place that makes prize winning burgers or something.

There were also tons of great volunteers who helped out with many things, including Little ‘T’ and Charles Luden with photography.

I guess I just decided after 13 years or so it was time to show others, because art doesn’t mean a damn thing if you are painting in your basement by yourself (As an artist friend told me once) oh the irony of this being filmed in a basement.

Jesse is actually the one who encouraged me to put it out there (who was super sick with the flu during the filming) but stole the show with so many hot licks. I would also like to thank Cameraman Bruce for rendering it for me.

A lot of people these days are all about promoting the arts in Sioux Falls, which is great, but they talk a lot, I sometimes get bitter, then laugh a little and say to myself, “Yeah, that’s what I have been saying for 20 years.”

The best part (besides the fact that I’m a lot lighter these days) is that I still know most of the people in this project and talk to them on a regular basis, they are friends in art, and those friends I will always hold dear. As I often tell people, “All of my heros are artists.”

Feel free to share.

*Jamie is co-owner with her husband Jeff of Zandbroz Variety, Hope is an accomplished tattoo artist in Austin, TX and Eyob is a national and international professional artist working out of Las Vegas and Sioux Falls remotely.