V A N C E     L E H M K U H L
V I S U A L     P O R T F O L I O

My resume is a useful index, but it doesn't quite convey the variety of truly
remarkable stuff that I have been involved in, much of it hard to pigeonhole and most
of it more visually- than text-oriented as well as being easily located with fuller context
online. So I created this "visual portfolio" that I believe is a more direct way to grasp
the scope and the relevant particulars of what I've been up to as a multimedia artist.

V FOR VEG:

THE BEST OF PHILLY'S VEGAN FOOD COLUMN

Author


For 16 years I wrote features on vegan eating and vegan living in Philadelphia for the Philadelphia Daily News and philly.com, including my "V for Veg" column from 2011 to 2016 for the former and my blog "V for Vegan" from 2013 to 2017 for the latter. This book from Sullivan Street Press collects my favorite top 50 columns along with a couple long-form pieces I did for the NAVS magazine, Vegetarian Voice. Also for Sullivan Street Press I wrote Eating Vegan in Philly (also released in 2016), a guidebook plus history of veganism and vegan eating in the Philadelphia area.

PHILLY VEGAN AWARDS

Emcee, Event Planner

On Friday, Nov. 10, 2017 people gathered at the Friends Center at 15th and Arch for the Philly Vegan Awards, a celebration of vegan eating and living in Philadelphia. Organized by the American Vegan Society in collaboration with Vance Lehmkuhl and Fran Costigan, the awards recognized 12 vegan-biz standouts and also presented a Lifetime Vegan Achievement Award to Rich Landau and Kate Jacoby, the vegan-dining pioneers who opened Horizons, Vedge, and other Philly vegan mainstays. The attendees had a chance to sample vegan offerings from 14 vendors. A proclamation from Mayor Jim Kenney, officially naming November 10, 2017 as Philly Vegan Day, was read before the awards ceremony commenced.

HOW NOT TO DIE

Illustrator


Dr. Michael Greger's book (with Gene Stone) How Not To Die hit the shelves at the beginning of 2016 and instantly landed on the New York Times Bestseller list. As Publishers Weekly noted, Greger "urges readers to take charge of their health, and faults the medical profession for neglecting the significance of nutrition. This evidence-based guide unpacks information useful to carnivores, vegetarians, and vegans alike, making a strong case for the healing power of food." I provided a key illustration in an editorial-cartoon vein for page 120 along with a couple other spot illustrations for elsewhere in the book.

2019 FUTURE OF FOOD SHOWCASE

Curator

In Philly's biggest and freest vegan-food showcase to date, the May 9, 2019 "Future of Food" Maker Meetup at the Venture Cafe had many of Philadelphia's best plant-based offerings. It was a taste of the future at more than two dozen tables spread around the 2nd and 3rd floor of the Science Center. Many in the crowd remarked on how good the 100% plant-based food was. I organized this event for impressario Marvin Weinberger (above) who had attended my panel (right) at Penn's October 2018 Ivy League Future of Food Conference. For the May 9 meetup, Weinberger assembled an informative panel presentation focusing on cell-based innovations (plus Vedge's Rich Landau) followed by a plant-based networking reception. (And he has more planned for vegan biz in Philadelphia. Stay tuned!)

NEW YORK TIMES SYNDICATE

Cartoonist

From 1998 to 2001, I was one half of an alternating cartoonist duo in an innovative New York Times Syndicate feature, Face Value, that offered celebrity caricatures of movie stars, mostly, tied to their current films. Above you'll find Kenneth Branagh and Nathan Lane in Love's Labours Lost; a non-movie illustration for Billy Joel's classical album "Fantasies & Delusions"; Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal; and Spike Lee's Bamboozled. To the side is Little Richard, for a TV film on the flamboyant performer in 2000.

VIRTUAL TIME TRAVEL

Pioneer, Photojournalist

Virtual time travel escapes the paradoxes of physical time travel by being limited to observation, based on a virtual reality space that mirrors history as it actually happened. I began helping to bring about this idea in 1996, and in 1998 organized Capsule Day, a project in which scores of people gathered photo and video data (among other captures) to help establish a VR time-travel destination. Capsule Day, Aug. 23, 1999, was proclaimed by the Mayor's Office and well-covered on Philadelphia TV and radio. Since then I've gathered many additional images of key spots and moments (see below). Ongoing updates in 360 include my July 2016 series of photospheres (see "Panoramic views of the tower") taken from an open-air crane above the top of the in-progress Comcast Technology Center. This was an experience like no other for me, and set a record for highest-ever Philly building-top panoramas - a record I hope has been broken by now.

GRID MAGAZINE

Environmental Features Writer

Here's a nod to Earth to Philly, the philly.com group blog I created in 2008 than ran until 2013, and for which I wound up writing more than 400 blog posts. Fun stuff included introducing the word "fracking" to philly.com; busting Food & Water Watch for an online hoax; and also tipping readers to nitrous oxide as a greenhouse gas, Septa's gendered-stickers problem, and a new environmental magazine called Grid. In January 2009 we said "Earth to Philly welcomes this new publication to the 'chorus of voices' getting the word out about the many ways we can work towards a sustainable Philadelphia." We were right, Grid flourished, and now we flash forward to July of 2018 for my first contribution to the magazine as a writer - an article covering Swarthmore College's controversy and activism surrounding the fossil-fuels divestment issue.

A WONDERFUL NOISE

Co-author/composer

Of the three musicals I have written with Michael Hollinger, this one has had the most visibility. And for good reason: It was workshopped by the Arden Theatre in 2002, and by New Dramatists in NYC in 2006, and in 2009 enjoyed a summer run at Creede Repertory Theatre. The musical won the Frederick Loewe award for Musical Theatre and the In The Spirit of America Award from the Barbara Barondess MacLean foundation. In 2016 the completed play finally debuted in the Philadelphia region with a fun and successful run at Villanova Theatre. Here's a trailer Villanova released for the 2016 production. That production was music directed by the amazing Peter Hilliard, who gave us what may be our best review: "Hollinger and Lehmkuhl find ways to be authentic to the tone of the period that are infused with a personal and zany voice that feels really original."

HUFFINGTON POST
CONTAGIOUS FESTIVAL

Winner

In its first year, the Huffington Post launched a 12-month viral-content contest called the Contagious Festival. Initially connected with another entry, I heard about Dick Cheney shooting a guy in the face and by the next morning had entered a "video game," Quail Hunting with Dick Cheney, that was really an interactive political cartoon. Starting with a half-month's worth of unique-visitor deficit, the game scrambled to the top with 430,000 and was covered by CNN, USA Today, Variety and the Bravo channel. Part of the prize was dinner with Arianna Huffington and in addition to chatting with Arianna, I will always remember scheming with John Cusack on a Tom Delay game for the next month's entry and jamming with Judge's Choice winner Paul Hipp. As the contest renewed monthly, I came back in November with another interactive cartoon and won most viral for a second time, the only person to do so.

BEST VEGAN CHEESESTEAK IN PHILLY

Founder

While compiling a list of vegan cheesesteaks for a 2010 Daily News Features section cover story I started mulling a contest to determine the best, and to publicize their existence. That came to be in 2014, as the first Best Vegan Cheesesteak in Philly contest culminated in Blackbird Pizzeria taking the honors. In 2015 Mark Mebus and I appeared on Good Day Philadelphia to explain (and sample) the concept of vegan cheesesteaks to host Mike Jerrick. That second year, the top prize went to Royal Tavern. But in the 2016 contest (which Cory Booker helped kick off with a Free Library photo-op), Blackbird recaptured the crown at Union Transfer and, by a razor-thin margin, held it in 2017 against upstart challenger Wiz Kid, which is run by Mebus' old boss Rich Landau.

BAH & THE HUMBUGS

Co-founder, Songwriter

America's Premier Satiric Christmas Rock Band was founded in 1985 by Paul Nordquist and me with the debut cassette-only album 12/25/01, filled with darkly "different" kinds of original Christmas tunes, forever raising the bar for Christmas irreverence. The early years were spent largely playing Christmas parties on Long Island, but by 2003 the Humbugs had achieved enough notoriety to appear on CNN, during which segment we performed parts of Paul's "Santa Pulled Down My Icicle Lights" and my own "Christmas To The World." The Humbugs are a staple of WXPN's Christmas Eve show, where you'll almost always hear the timeless Lehmkuhl/Nordquist collaboration (along with John Waiste, of course) "Santa Hat."

KNIGHT RIDDER AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN INNOVATION

2005 Winner

This 2005 company-wide Knight-Ridder award recognized some of the various innovations I brought to philly.com, which included some of the first journalists' blogs in the nation, the first big-city newspaper podcast in the nation, forward-looking news-page design, animated political cartoons and my Wing Bowl Game. Oh yeah, and also helping Wendy Warren to create the impactful project The Next Mayor, which is why KR at some point created the photo of us here.

GREEN BEINGS

Founder, Songwriter

The song "Leftovers" was written for my initial Vegetarian Summerfest appearance in 1998, and in 1999 with Amy Guskin and Paul Nordquist I formed Green Beings as an eco-conscious satiric pop band showcasing Paul's and my original songs. We put out two albums, Garden Variety and Electric Green, and played gigs such as the 2000 Better Living Festival. "Leftovers" (singalong video here) was played six times on the original Dr. Demento radio show, and continues to be heard on the good Dr's web-radio version. Tunes such as "Where Do You Get Your Protein?" and "Jesus Was A Flexitarian" as well as video-driven B-sides like "I Can Drive 55" entertained many but failed to chart, and after contributing 3 new songs to the Green Beings canon for a 2015 best-of compilation, this band disbanded.

KINETIC SCULTURE RACE

Kinetonaut, Co-captain

Kinetic Sculpture Racing traces its roots to the 1960s in California, where the Grand National Championship is held each year, but the first East Coast Championship was in Baltimore in 1999. The Philadelphia Dumpster Divers participated in that race, and in every race every year, the only team to do so. For the past 10 years or so my son Skyler and I have been in charge of the Dumpster Divers team and its various vehicles, including Green Racer X, Cat-a-Maran, Dad-a-Maran, Big Foot, Cornycopia, High Hat, and this year's, Sky Hat.

CHRISTMAS VILLAGE

Accidental Savior

In my documenting of a changing Philadelphia (as noted above), I was drawn to construction equipment because it is where something physical is changing. I took this picture first, then asked the guy what they were doing. He shrugged and said, "too many complaints." I headed back to the newsroom and shared with my reporter colleagues the photo and the explanation. Long story short, they grabbed it tenaciously and after days of Daily News cover stories on the mayoral controversy, Mayor Nutter put the "Christmas" back in "Christmas Village."

OTHER VARIOUS BOOKS

Illustrator / Contributor

In 2013 I collaborated with scientist Paul Halpern on his children's book "What's the Matter With Pluto?" which tells the story of the Planet Club, and Pluto's shifting status within same, from the perspective of the planets themselves. In addition to this and the books mentioned above I've also contributed illustrations to works such as Modern Humorist's Rough Draft: Pop Culture The Way It Almost Was (2001, Three Rivers Press), The Book of Zines (Henry Holt, 1997), The Carol J. Adams Reader (Bloomsbury Press, 2016) and assorted earlier works for publishers such as MacMillan and McGraw Hill.