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