blog entry #27

Final Artist Statement:

My work this semester reflects not only who I am as an artist but also as a person. My family and friends, and the experiences I have with them inspire me to create these images. Throughout this semester I have explored Mary Engelbreit's illustrated work "Life is Just a Chair of Bowlies" and responed to her words through my own imagery. The final product is my own book with words of wisdom and dreamy images drawn from the home.

Lukas Felzmann

Lukas Felzmann

San Francisco based artist Lukas Flezmann creates complex environments that must be absorbed rather than scrutinized. The image above, Muse and Restraint, is from he Open Series that alludes to the benefits and hazards of learning. Symbols such as a wigned blackboard, barbed wire, towering stacks of books and dangling, knife-like shards of stone foncront the viewer in a a claustrophobic room that he refers to as "anti-space".

Combining mural sized photographs with found objects, Felzmann alludes to the powerful forces of nature and time. the environment he creates becomes a stage where oppositional elements play off of one another to create a tense and evocative balance. the installlation sems to suggest that learning – the measured, contemplative scrutiny of our relationship to the natural, the cultural and the historical – is the only way to keep hope alive in these unsettling times.

(talking about room for endangered species) Lukas Felzmann

"This installation came from the experience of tension between nature and culture in the San Francisco Headlands, but stands as a symbolic gesture for any place. It was the close proximity of the endless urban sprawl to the "park" as nature sanctuary and how easily I could move from one to the other which influenced my work while I was there. Nature seemed to be almost reclaiming the ruins of civilization, but when I came across a list of Endangered Species I was struck by the incredible amount of names on it.
I decided to make a piece about this with an installation which would embrace the landscape, bring it in to the empty architecture of the building so that they become part of each other and both could be contemplated in the same space. Through twelve Camera Obscura projections, which fell on a transparent list of all Endangered Species, one was surrounded inside the room with an upside down outside. The space created mirrored the dichotomy of the beauty outside and the terror inside." Felzmann
Felzmann was born in Zurich in 1959, earned his MFA at the San Francisco Art Instute in Photography. He has taught photography at the California College of the ARts, the San Francico Art Institue and at Stanford Univeristy since 1993. His photographs have been shown in Europe, Egypt, Columnia and the US.

I think overall Felzmann tries to to get his viewers to think about the impact we have on our environment and nature, I really enjoy his work not only because of it's beauty but also for concept. Felzmann communicates strong ideas in his work.

thesis progress

thesis progress

text: "Any learning's richer when it's multiplied by two."
"If you have knowledge, let others light their candles by it."

Text: "And standing up for what we think makes a difference!"
"Hurt Not the Earth, Neither the Sea, Nor the Trees." Revelations 7:3

thesis crit

I think my concept of exploring life lessons through the imagery of home and nature is apparent in my images through use of textures, patterns, & fabrics from the home in tandem with images also from that concept.

My newer images aren't quite done yet but just something i'm working on. combining some imagery from the pages of the book with my own images. the chair image is going to be the cover of the book "Life is just a chair of bowlies" so i still need to add text and make it look older like the other images in the series. the other two images i'm still playing around with, i like where the path image is going but not so sure about the 'put your heart into it' image since it's primarily composed of an image from the book.

photographer presentation 6

Judith Golden
I chose Judith because of her book work, being that i'm trying to currently make a book. Her books are somewhat similar to mine in that they contain dreams, notes from her journals, dictionary definitions, and poetry weaved through pages of photographs, collage & paint. Although her themes of death, rebirth, love & loss are a bit heavier than mine I thought it would be good to look through them to get some inspiration on how to put mine together.

Rudy Wilner Stack said, " Golden's work has helped define the history of women exploring self and society thorugh visual media since the 1070s when she was first recognized as a distinctive creative voice. working with series, golden inventories the myths and methods of human consciousness while revealing the powers of nature and the mysteries of time. her work continues to eveolve iwth rich new subjects, returning iconic thems, and unending questions and answeres to the experience of life.

She grew up in Chicago where she attributes her curiosity regarding other cultures and countries to this early expereince in a multicultural neighborhood. she earned here bfa in '73 from the art instute of chicago & in '75 earned her mfa from UCLA. The California Funk Movement was going on at the time which allowed a playful and personal attitude within her art. Golden describes her photographs intent as to suggest the human connection with sacred, eternal, and spiritual realms. She is currently working on a new series, "Memory Mosiacs", which represents fragments of memory, history and mystery.

Julie Blackmon
statement:
The Dutch proverb “a Jan Steen household” originated in the 17th century and is used today to refer to a home in disarray, full of rowdy children and boisterous family gatherings.  The paintings of Steen, along with those of other Dutch and Flemish genre painters, helped inspire this body of work.  I am the oldest of nine children and now the mother of three.  As Steen’s personal narratives of family life depicted nearly 400 yrs. ago, the conflation of art and life is an area I have explored in photographing the everyday life of my family and the lives of my sisters and their families at home.  These images are both fictional and auto-biographical, and reflect not only our lives today and as children growing up in a large family, but also move beyond the documentary to explore the fantastic elements of our everyday lives, both imagined and real.

     The stress, the chaos, and the need to simultaneously escape and connect are issue that I investigate in this body of work.  We live in a culture where we are both “child centered” and “self-obsessed.”  The struggle between living in the moment versus escaping to another reality is intense since these two opposites strive to dominate.  Caught in the swirl of soccer practices, play dates, work, and trying to find our way in our “make-over” culture, we must still create the space to find ourselves.  The expectations of family life have never been more at odds with each other.  These issues, as well as the relationship between the domestic landscape of the past and present, are issues I have explored in these photographs.  I believe there are moments that can be found throughout any given day that bring sanctuary.  It is in finding these moments amidst the stress of the everyday that my life as a mother parallels my work as an artist, and where the dynamics of family life throughout time seem remarkably unchanged.  As an artist and as a mother, I believe life’s most poignant moments come from the ability to fuse fantasy and reality:  to see the mythic amidst the chaos.

born in 1966 in springfield missouri. studied at missouri state university where she became interested in photography and the work of sally mann and keith carter. drawing extensively on her personal experiences and realtionships, blackmon adds an element of humor and fantasy to create works that touch on both the everyday and the fictious.

Blog Prompt #23

1. What is the concept driving your thesis project at this point in the semester? Has your concept changed since the beginning of the semester? If so, describe the changes?
⁃ My concept has stayed consistent throughout the semester, that being Home & Nature. Focusing on life lessons.
2. How has your process of experimentation and image creation throughout the semester expanded, redirected, altered, or tightened your concept?
⁃ I don't know if its done any of the above to my concept. I've mainly struggled with incorporating my images into the specific concept of the page and making that relate fluidly throughout my pages (use of scanned-in fabrics etc.)
3. How has your process of experimentation and image creation throughout the semester affected the visual aspects of your work?
⁃ The process of scanning in found fabrics/papers/etc. has had a huge affect on the images I use and how they fit in the frame. the scanned-in images sets the shape and feel of the page and how the image relates to it.
4. Describe how the visual aspects of your project align with the content and concept of your project. Are there ways in which they seem contrary to your concept? How might you tackle this misalignment?
⁃ I think the visual aspects of my project directly relate to my theme of home and nature. the visuals are very homy objects that also play off nature so i think they're working really well at the moment.

Blog Prompt #24 (Related to M.F.A. talks)

1. Which of the presenters’ work did you most relate to or were most inspired by?

2. Which of the presenters’ ideas did you most relate to or were you most inspired by?

3. Describe how one of the presenters revealed new layers of meaning in her/his work through their talk. How did your understanding of the work change or what did you learn that you were not aware of when viewing/experiencing the work prior to hearing the talks?

4. What would you have wished to hear more about through their talks?

5. Did you find that the ideas discussed were clearly represented in the formal/visual/sensory aspects of work? Did you find that the work revealed other ideas beyond what the artist discussed? Did you find that there were disconnects or that the words and visual elements of the works connected?

I was absent that day :(

Blog Prompt 25
Challenge: Think of a location that your thesis project could be displayed, exhibited, disseminated, installed, shop-dropped (http://shopdropping.net/), placed, hidden, mounted, projected, inserted, etc. that is outside the traditional gallery setting.
I would love to make many copies of my book and pass them out to elementary students. i was very young when i received my copy and used to love looking through the pictures and having my family read it to me. i think its very important to teach morals at a young age and being able to relate the words to an image is very helpful to young children.

Photographer presentation 5

Anne Hardy

Born in 1970, Anne is a British artist best known for her large-scale photographic work of unusual interior spaces. She earned her MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art in 2000 and works in London.
Anne's images appear to be photographs of existing places but are actually carefully constructed sets, created by her in her studio, which she photographs. Subject matter includes junk she has found in markets, urban skips or jumple sales. the type of objects she chooses have ranged form antlers, brightly colored cables, old xmas trees, light bulbs, basketballs, baloons, test tubes & butterfiles. Anne puts these everyday objects together and transforms them into unusual almost dreamlike environments which critics describe as unnerving with themes of abandonment and desolation.

Angela Strassheim

Born in 1969 in Bloomfield, Iowa. Before recieving her MFA from Yale in 2003, Angela became certified as a forensic photographer. She did crime scene, evidence, and surveillance photography in Miami and, while working in New York, photographed autopsies. Her first exhibition work was a photograph of a naked woman on an unkempt bed who had committed suicide, and subsequent photographs feature a hospital x-ray room, a body in an open casket, and a bloddy surgical saw. but many of Angela's vivid color photographs depict less dramatic, even banal, objects and figures, and she identifies her subject matter as "the Midwest and the middle-class American family with the dog, etc." yet the lessons of forensics have lingered, and scientific detachment, meticulous symmetry, and clinical lighting pervade each of her images. I think her more recent work is very interesting focusing on scenes from life of her family and friends. they have mysterious yet timeless quality about them even though they are very average events.

Blog prompt 22

Crazy. It seems like a ton of work that I can't even wrap my mind around, let alone their motivations to take on such a project. It is truly amazing what technology can allow us to do but my question is why photograph a real scenario, make it digitally, then make it from materials after that? I guess I would like to see the final outcome to get a better idea what it looks like.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDYDxWSjVJw

thesis midterm

Blog Prompts 20 & 21

#20 Describe some common aesthetic/formal qualities, content, and conceptual threads in “snapshot” photography.

I love the spontaneity in snapshot photography. It doesn’t feel manipulated or set up, its raw and fresh. I think that’s what makes it so strong conceptually as well as aesthetically. Its content feels real therefore it’s stronger and more appealing, people can relate to it more than a studio set-up.

#21 Brainstorms! (In an effort to expand, improve, push your thesis projects further, pick 5 of the following to discuss.)

a. Ideas sometimes grow out of irritation. What is a negative thought you are having about your project? What is the opposite of this negative thought? How could you implement a change in your project so that this negative thought will subside?
Negatively I feel like I’m just decorating old work and would love to shoot new work but conceptually this weather does not fit with my piece so I’m kind of stuck in boredom and feel like I’m making myself work on it at times instead of wanting to dig deeper into the project. Opposite of this thought would be that I should look further back into photographs and embrace that they were taken in the past and maybe find older images I have forgotten about to use or go through Grandma’s millions of photos. I think doing this would help me get back into the project.

d. Type twenty words or phrases that relate to your project.
Home. Nature. Life. Family. Friendship. Beautiful. Flowers. Lessons. Words. Sayings. Folky. Old. Snapshots. Keepsake. Scrapbook. Book. Friendly. Light. Sunny. Antique.

e. At the deepest core, describe why you like this project. Dig deep!
It reminds me of my childhood and allows me to revisit that time in my life and relate back to a book that I grew up with and put my own impressions on it. Also, it allows me to go back into pictures and design a layout to make them work with, add in type & textures. This aspect of the project relates to my interests not only in photography but also graphic design.

f. Expand your project. If time, money, materials, etc would not affect you, how would you expand your project?
I would love to go on location in various place that have sunshine! Unfortunately Michigan sucks right now for the look and feel I am going for in my images so I’m forced to use past shot pieces which I do not want to do. For my project I envision fields, flowers, forests, lakes etc.


g. Contract your project. What would it boil down to if squeezed and contracted to its simplest form?
Life’s beauties and lessons.

photographer presentation 4

Koto Bolofo was born in South Africa in 1959 and raised in Great Britain. Bolofo has photographed and made short films for magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair & GQ. He has created advertising campaigns for companies including Hermes, Louis Vuitton and Dom Perigon. He is said to be one of fashions most individual and iconic photographers. When asked about his approach and process of picture taking Bolofo replied, "Before even beginning to take picture I find an idea in one's head and think it over in 'motion' like film directors. My brain searches for characters in the labyrinths of my mind. Once that is established the goal with my camera is to achieve a timeless photograph which has an emotional quality to ones eye and not produce a piece of 'throw away art'."

Richard Avedon was an American photographer whose portrait photographs 'helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century', as quoted from the New York Times. He also photographed patients of mental hospitals, the Civil Rights Movement, Protesters of the Vietnam War and later the fall of the Berlin Wall. Born May 15, 1923 in NYC to a Jewish-Russian family. Avedon started his photography career at a department store and was quickly discovered by Alexey Brodovitch at Harper's Bazaar. In '46 Avedon set up his own studio and began providing images for magazines including Vogue & Life. Avedon did not conform to the standard technique of taking fashion photographs, where models stood emotionless and seemingly indifferent to the camer. Instead, Avedon showed models full of emotion, smiling, laughing, and many times, in action. Avedon was always interested in how portraiture captures the personality and soul of its subject. As his reputation as a photographer became widely known, he brought in many famous faces to his studio and photographed them with a large-format 8x10 view camera. his portraits were easily distinguished by their minimalist style, where the person is looking squarely at the camera.

Arnold Newman was born March 3, 1918 in NYC. An American photographer noted for his 'environmental portraits' of artists and politicians. Newman attended the University of Miami studying painting and drawing with an introduction to Modernism. Unable to afford continuing after two years, he moved to Philly to work for a studio making 49cent portraits. His time there taught him the importance of interacting with his subjects and allowed him to develop his technique. Newman found his vision in the empathy he felt for artists and their work. Although he photographed many personalities such as JFK, Picasso, Marilyn Monroe, Mikey Mantle & Audrey Hepburn he maintained that even if the subject is not known, or is already forgotten, the photograph itself must still excite and interest the viewer.

Sarah Hinton: Sally Mann

Sarah Hinton: Sally Mann: "Sally Mann was born in 1951 in Lexington, Virginia, where she continues to live and work. She received a BA from Hollins College in 1974, an..."

Richard Misrach, presentation 2

(born in Los Angeles, California in 1949) is an American photographer known for his photographs of human intervention in landscapes. His works are represented in more than fifty major museum collections around the world.

Richard Misrach is one of the most influential and prolific artists of his generation. In the 1970’s, he helped pioneer the renaissance of color photography and large-scale presentation that are widespread practice today. Best known for his ongoing epic series, Desert Cantos, a multi-faceted approach to the study of place and man’s complex relationship to it, he has worked in the landscape for over 40 years. Other notable bodies of work include his documentation of the industrial corridor along the Mississippi River known as Cancer Alley, the sumptuous study of weather, time, color and light in his serial photographs of the Golden Gate, and On the Beach, an aerial perspective of human interaction and isolation. Recent projects mark departures from his work to date. In one series, he has experimented with new advances in digital capture and printing, foregrounding the negative as an end in itself and digitally creating images with astonishing detail and color spectrum. More recently, he built a powerful narrative out of images of graffiti produced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, made with a 4-megapixel pocket camera.
"For most people, the desert defines itself as a place where little happens, except the occasional glimpse of tumbleweed blowing across the sand. There are no movie theaters, coffee shops, malls or cars. There are no visible towns for miles and few noises, except the sound of your own breathing. In Misrach's desert, the land vibrates with underground nuclear testing and the sky illuminates with radiation seeping into the atmosphere, creating fantastic colors at every glance."
"Whether photographing a flooded town, a desert fire, an abandoned nuclear test site or the colors on the horizon emanating from a small town miles away, Richard Misrach draws the viewer into his world through his mastery of color. Ranging from beautiful lakes to secret military bunkers to speed racing on the Utah salt flats, Misrach's work chronicles mans involvement in the desert, while always paying homage to the intrinsic beauty provided by nature. It's through beauty that Misrach's social concerns are most revealed. By pulling the viewer into a glowing light or calm body of water, he presents situations which leave us asking questions about the American desert -- a desert which continues to heal and revive itself regardless of mans actions."
composition:Misrach heavily relies on the horizon line in his works and plays off the ground & clouds off of it, utilizing reflections in water many times. light plays a huge role in every piece.
concept:photographing something not always appealing in a very appealing, beautiful way.
my opinion: I think his work is very beautiful but looking through many of his images at a time they become usual, expected & not very interesting.