This is the beginning of something new for the Gazette. YouTube turned twenty years old this month and has become an invaluable tool in that time. We use it for almost everything. YouTube is the Alexandria of Modernity, and it fits inside your pocket. I want to combine YouTube's promise as a resource with our love for Riverside. I plan on writing these stories and directing you all to a YouTube video with content related to Riverside.
Make no mistake—this is an exercise in nostalgia, but it is also a fun way to tell our story. I have selected some videos for future editions that feature some known Gazette subscribers. I am really excited about this series, and I hope it is as fun for you as it is for me.
I came across a YouTube video of a watercolor by Don O'Neill. Many of you probably remember Don. He was a fixture in the downtown arts scene for decades. His grandson, Reilly O'Neill, made a YouTube channel featuring Don's magical renditions of the city we love. He is on a mission to bring light to his grandfather's work. He shows us Don's paintings not only with academic rigor but in a way that emphasizes his admiration for his grandpa. He is doing an incredible job; we greatly benefit from his effort.
"I am telling my story, and my grandfather's work is a huge part of it. This gives me more artistic license to tell a version of my grandfather's story." Reilly says of his efforts." I didn't want to set out to do the job of an art historian who needs to be more objective; I am biased. I would rather embrace that bias and make something compelling for people to watch than produce something that focuses more on academic focus. "
Don's work endures even almost twenty years after his death. He had a unique vision and pushed the watercolor medium into places where most would not. In their traditional role, watercolors tell the stories seen in dreams, soft and round. Don forced the medium into telling a more angular, bustling tale. His bold and stylish portrayals almost betray the conceptions of what watercolor looks like while looking unmistakably like watercolor.
His work is important–To the art world, of course, but especially to Riverside. Reilly realizes his grandfather's unique vision is worth preserving. "On a long enough timeline, one I will probably see as an old man in the future. I feel my grandfather's art will really represent a bygone era." Reilly says, "An era that many people in society will have no living memory of. Sort of like how we look back at old Western art with wagons. The world of 2065 will be very different than the one he painted in the 1990s."
