although her response to my current senior portfolio work didnt seem to give any real sense of direction (atleast any that i am particularly ready to follow at this point in time), i did have a very good talk with justine kurland .needless to say we ended up talking more about motherhood than images i project and re-photograph... yet she made the comment that she wanted me to be the little girl again that took the original pictures.....being a product of yale, she has a very specific idea of what photography should be and the techniques that really speak to the traditions of the medium. (while i have my own ideas of what is inherent in the medium)she did however really seem to like my self portraits with miles; these were images i have been taking before and after he was born that i havent shown anyone yet....she said something along the lines of how motherhood, (when done right) can be just as raw as those larry-esque heroin addicts......" you could photograph the shit that gets under your fingernails when you change his diaper" ~kurland

"making friends"

A question was asked during the justine kurland lecture about whether she felt distanced from her subject(s), and it seemed she didnt quite know how to respond. (as the other shanna later mentioned ; " i mean just how close does she get? is she getting naked with them?")based on my perception of what she said in her tales of making the photographs, i answered the question for her in my own mind. no, there was not much separation going on between the photographer and her subjects. it was not as if she was a diane arbus, capturing that "other", but more as if she were almost part of the other; she seemed to fit in with them.hearing her speak of her mother working in the renaisssance fairs, and then seeing the image of this woman next to a young girl blessing her with the smoke from a sage stick,i began to feel as if i knew this side of her, who she was and what kind of people she most likely interacted with her entire life. i myself had know as a child friends of my own mother'swho loved to be naked, wore feathers in their hair , talked about the meaning of "positive energy", and who always seemed somewhat removed from the rest of the world. they lived in their own little universe. i felt i had had so many similar relationships with people who are on that "wavelength", and even though i might not go to the extreme lengthsthat they might, i still feel more at home with them than many other "normal" people.........
i found it hilariously genius how she again and again referred to those without clothes as "the nakeds" (as opposed to "the nudes") ; it made sense as she explained how her models' function were not to be merely a nude form, but an expression of "freedom of nakedness" (this idea also made them much less sexualized and more innocent/pure)upon hearing kurland speak, it became apparent that she herself shared a similar lack of confining inhibitions created by the "norms" of society....
lastly, i feel her notions made a somewhat nostalgic connection with myself, particularly the "doodling- on- eachother's- back- with -your- fingernails game" that me and my own sister played.........her photographs (and her words) evoked such familiarity with my own way of thought, life experiences, etc

friedrich

Su Friedrich's talk was , although intreaguing, a tease! i wish she had talked less and shown more of her videos.yet her words somehow exposed the way in which she worked; it was very apparent that she relied heavily on analmost photograph memory to engage her creative process. the way she told of the car she and her girlfriend got, her writing a letter to her father about her mother listening to classical music, and then how she didnt send it to him....she had an ability to evoke mental images in those in the audience's heads simply orally (she did with me anyway)then again, her rhetorical approach also seemed a reflection of her film work, hence the reason why we saw only small portions of her films. it did become difficult to make ones own interpretation as she sometimes even spoke over-top of the films,almost pushing the ways in which she wanted them to be read..... (it was distracting)i do remember upon viewing the first film thinking that the urg machine rowing appeared very sexualized. (i am assuming this was her intention as she was dealing with gender ambiguity)
in the end i felt a little cheated; once i became pulled into a film , like the one with the two little girls or the one with the nuns, she wouldturn it off! was this cencorship or just a ploy to get us to go out and get the films on your own?

(submissions)

VMFA

Photo on Campus

imitation pumpkin

happy halloween.

kate gilmore

"if humor isn't involved, i'm not interested" ~kate gilmore


i found kate gilmore to be humbly brilliant, and very honest in a very comical way. watching video pieces like "main squeeze" and "star bright, star might" i myself became very tense and even a little claustrophobic, but i still viewed them as more funny than disturbing or unsettling. it almost pained me to watch, but at the same time i wanted to laugh.


the first video shown, " my love is an anchor" i read in a much more literal sense, most likely due to the title of the work. i related it "maybe even to a fault) to real life relationship issues of attachment, dependency , and being content to be miserable. i saw this girl, all dressed to step out into the world, yet she was held back (by her love, the anchor......) although i received it with these undertones of relationship issues, it still achieved a great level of humor, unlike the more raw drama and emotion-filled relationship studying photos of nan goldin. i thought of the two artist as dealing with the same subject matter, only with different techniques; representational vs documentary, funny vs sad, etc.....

my favorite pieces of hers were "heartbreaker" and "wallflower" (particularly the latter purely because of the aesthetic).... i enjoyed the split screen action reminiscent of 70s video performance pieces, and of course the objects used and their quantity and cluttered -ness.
it all kind of reminded me of a more funny and female chris burden, only less violent.
also, specifically "heartbreaker" made me think of my friend whitney, who also uses shotty construction and destructive deconstruction , only her work is much more dark (and more bloody). the breaking apart of the wooden heart was very similar to whitney breaking out of a wooden crate she had built, made dead bunnnies to go inside, and which she herself sat in wearing a tattered innocent-looking dress before she hammered her way out.
unfortunately, it seems the sculpture kids apparently aren't really made to explain their work, so i still cant quite get her to talk about it.

fishbowl

i visited tom condon's studio on its opening night and was delighted to see his work up close and in person. i had previously only seen pictures and the one piece that was behind glass in the hall at school. being in front of them only reaffirmed the importance of that way of viewing artist's work
(as opposed to viewing them in a book, on the internet, etc); with tom's work it is the texture that results form his burning which begs to be touched. i thought about how he could be questioned as to whether his work "fits in" to the category of photography, when the realization occurred in me that he is most definitely painting with light, or more so exposing by his own hand, which is a key technique of traditional photography. the process in creating the pattern detail also very much resembles that of making photograms........ which of course that reappropriation of a photographic technique in itself intrigues me.......

entranced by the almost psychedelic koala bear-ish figures, i began talking with an old friend of the artist about myself, my own work and what is going on in my own personal life. we discussed my frustration of my being in a relationship with a non-artist (and its failure to progress), my fears of not having enough time for my art, and the issues of raising a child in a non-traditional family setting. her responses were very positive, encouraging, and reassuring. she then pulled out a work of tom's was not on display; a work that dealt with amnesia and the 3 second memory of a goldfish. (in much more eloquently spoken words than how i will describe here,) she proceeded to explain how a goldfish circles through life, always changing, going through one phase of life to the next. he is never stuck in one place for very long, and he is never the same goldfish twice.
in so many words, she, who herself is a teacher of autistic children (and therefore has to be very calm, soothing, and optimistic) let me know that, even if i dont like where i am at in life right now, it will surely not be that way forever.

mind boggle

(that was the worst blog post ever; this is the only portion left that is worth keeping)




i am sitting in front of andre's mother's computer, and there is a half of a Polaroid of a man, stuck in the corner of a picture frame. (although i do not know the story behind it) i wonder at this familiar occurrence; it seems a blatant action of selective memory. why do people cut other people out of photographs? this is yet another reason one might say, "there is no truth in photography" , hmmmm. maybe half-truths?

artist lecture #2: adelaide paul

a proud horse with no bones in her legs to hold her up

"30 days" ; a 432 urns numbered, with corresponding photos of the dogs each represents



as with james hyde, i knew nothing of adelaide paul's work before attending her lecture, aside from seeing the handbill showing a sculpted figure of a greyhound with leather sewn on like skin. it caught my eye instantly, promising to be atleast somewhat more interesting than the last lecture. the title of a series of hers contains "animal souls" .....
there is something about animals used in artwork (when done right) that creates a mood of quiet mystery; its as if the animals could talk but chooses not to, or humans choose not to listen, yet the artist has discovered some secret that only the animal knows.

i was intrigued all the way through adelaide's talk, from her beginnings in what one might refer to more as "craft" in ceramics, to the later more skillful forms, figures, and figurines, that took on an air of more conceptualized pieces.

the work which stood out to me as one of the most charged was called "30 days"; over 400 small clean white urns, each numbered and displayed on long shelves. in one gallery they were displayed against "hopital green" walls, another against a more calming lavender. also in the room were a few photo albums of 432 dogs (one for each urn) who had been "destroyed" in a months time. adelaide preferred this word as opposed to "euthenized" because the latter refers to animals who were put down due to suffering; these animals were healthy yet simply overpopulating the shelters in the town where adelaide lived.
adelaide dealt with ideals of interactions between humans anmd animals, and even gave many of her later figurines some humanly forms.
two greyhounds were "anthropomorphisized" ; one was given female human-like breasts , the other human-like male genitalia.
some figures have eyes that are sewn shut, others are given real animal antlers.
she most recently has been working with veternarian students and professors of anatomy to gain the most accurate knowledge of bodily forms, and noted how really similar so many creatures are underneath their skin.
i found her and her work to be oddly beautiful, her animal obsession paralleling the creepiness of a mortician working with corpses.... she did say that she had a puppy fetus in a jar at her studio.
later i thought of sally mann and her greyhound, the dog bones she dug up and photographed in "what remains".
even closer to home, i thought of shanna merola's work, (that which is rarely seen by many in the photo dept) which incorporates skeletal remains of small animals, next to pretty pieces of fabric and ripped out pages of old encylclopedias.......
it all inspires me to start a series of images of two-headed animals.......

Artist Lecture #1: James Hyde

(had i not found it so dull) i would have found the painfully modern-art frescoes and sculpture of james hyde humorous.
not that they were comical in any way, but that it is 2007 and some artists still are preaching and making (what i find to be) such minimalist conservative works that "make you aware of the space in, around, throughout"............. its like the fried guy (art critic) just now recognizing photography as art.....
i feel like such notions are so outdated; they are the important periods of art history that bore me to tears.

the whole lecture brought to mind the word "beautiful" and its now almost negative connotation because of its lack of meaning. Hyde described himself as a formalist, being that the meaning of his work exists "within the forms". maybe i have become over-cynical because of the CONCEPT pushers in my own department, but i honestly had that feeling of "its not enough".
its not enough anymore to rely on meaning within forms, there must be something outside of that.
hyde did though, make a comment that resonated somewhat with my own ideals;
he stated that "anything that is important is invisible".
on that note i agreed to an extent. it is like in a photograph (or moving image) where what lies outside the frame holds the most fascination, what happened a moment before, the moment after, who took that picture, what were they thinking..........

overall i personally cannot decipher what exac-atic-ally distinguishes hyde's, and other renouned artists like him, from those like myself when i attempt to paint and end up with a weird abstract mess of color..... why do they become so highly praised for it?

found slide


my slide



"to collect photographs is to collect the world. movies and television programs light up walls, flicker, and go out; with still photographs the image is also an object, light weight, cheap to produce, easy to carry about, accumulate, store."
~susan sontag, "America, Seen through Photographs Darkly"

"time positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art."
~ sontag

these statements create a relevant insight into some of the ideas presented in my own work.
the more i read and re-read, the more i find these connections.
it is true in my own perspective; if i find an old photograph, whose original intention most likely
was not to be "art", its antiquated state that exists in the present makes it, for me, art-worthy.
of course this is problematic. this notion automatically places such images then in the
negative connotation of "instant art"...........although, if used for a good reason, maybe not.

my slide show (to be shown tuesday) is as of right now a collection, a hodge podge, a catharsis of my
creative subconscious
fragmented and scattered visual representation of inspiration to my thought processes
and artistic style.
after viewing the slides over and over again, i realize that there is something about
the spaces in between slides, the ones where nothing but a white rectangle of light is projected.
here is where memories are fabricated, lost, blurred........
collective vs selective memory
short-term memory loss.....

miss annie

petersburg


my nellie appropriation








miss annie lives in the historic district of petersburg, on what seems a quiet little road (although apparently is not at all far from a more dangerous part of town) in a tiny little house which has been her place of residence for about 60 of her 81 years on this earth. we pulled up in front of her house last tuesday afternoon, i became excited at the sight of her porch covered with potted plants. i knew that what i would see inside might mean more to me than what it would to andre; to him it was just his grandma's little house, the same one he had visited with her in since he was small. he was also not looking forward to seeing the man he called "his brother's father" , aka "shady", miss annie's 55 year old son and my own son's grandfather. i had met miss annie before, although she did not remember my name or that me and andre's baby was a boy. nonetheless she was very excited to see us. i entered the dim living room, and first noticed a soap opera droning quietly of the tv, then all the photos all over the wood paneled walls. i stood with miles in my arms and admired them, especially the ones that had faded out to a reddish tint, the people in them bearing afros and flower patterned button up shirts. this is the stuff i was looking for. i was left in there alone for a minute, and then a skinny robe clad old man stumbles in the room and with a raspy voice asks if that was the little guy. i said " yep! here he is. this is baby miles" unintentionally speaking as if to a child or a person who couldnt understand english very well. "so this is the man whose sperm created andre" i thought to myself. shady. shady whose father was grady. shady who made little shady, who didnt even care to tell old shady that a little shade tree was born. that would be my little miles, whom miss annie pronounced loudly "mile!" emphasis on the i, the s dropped off completely. miss annie told me about how all the people in the photographs, forgetting many of the names. i caught a glimpse of several polaroids which i think i will wait till next visit to inquire about. i took the opportunity to get my own photographs of shady and little shady together, and miss annie and miles . i even got a picture of miss annie eating chicken, which i am sure i wont show her, and im sure i may be accused of perpetuating a stereotype, but it was just for myself. i had to hold back from laughing when i heard "momma, give me some money so i can go get somethin to eat!" which sounded so all too familiar .............. little shady and old shady are almost painfully similar in more ways than one. but old shady had to ask for money from his momma because she has to keep his own from him to keep him from buying crack. little shady only asks because he is broke........
miss annie told me i better bring her some pictures to add to her collection so i will be back.

myself as the "art critic"

i have probably chosen the most absurdly difficult fellow student to critique/articulate/analyze, but for whatever reason his makes sense in a nonsensical way.
matt harvey's work to me is a visual representation of the human brain. matt himself compared his concept to the endless universe of the internet; i see the validity of this notion in how one link leads to another and another, how one page is a subcategory to a larger site, how some pages are "not found"....... in this i relate to the empty voids in one photograph, that then in turn contrasts to a hole that is filled in another (as if something was taken from one spot and put into the next) , or how one stone thrown into the pond (or a click of a mouse) sets off a series of ripples..........
and then i also see it as representative of the interworkings of our own thought processes. its like when you begin thinking about how you need to feed your cat and then think about buying trashbags (for the litterbox) and then think about visiting your friend who lives a block from the grocery store......then you go back to your cat and decide to brush his hair, to then realize you need to clean the hair out of your tub drain....... the cycle , recycle, and even dead ends go on and on.

maybe this did not explain anything at all. yet i almost think that is ultimately the point of matt harvey's work........

determining factors

a close friend of mine asked for advice on two guys she was seeing. she wanted to know which one seemed like the better choice. one, she said, may be a heroin addict, is 30 yrs old, and lives with his mom. the other is 21, lives on his own, and has a photograph of himself with his hand in the air, a little mustache drawn above his lip and the accompanying quote states " sieg heil 4life" (as a "joke") , and this tatoo that he got for free (also a "joke");



yes, it does say "white power" in the cloud , and there is a swastika on the unicorn.
(and i used to enjoy unicorns........)
weighing the options, hmmmm. that is a tough one.
apparently the "nazi" as even she has come to refer to him as, is better in bed.
i told her to paint herself brown and see if he would still have sex with her.
and then i thought about it; what a disturbing series of photographs that would make.
just in general, what if self-proclaimed or even closet racists were forced to engage in any intimate situation with the "other" , what resulting portraits would come out of it?
the tension makes me shudder. better yet what if you put a member of kkk and a black person in a photo booth together (if they did not kill eachother first....) 0r a bible thumping holy roller in a photo booth with a gay person? the notion of pushing comfort levels is a concept artists have toyed with for decades; vito acconci's "seedbed" performance piece comes to mind..... or paul macarthy and his vomiting with his genitals exposed......
yet the boundaries of predjudices is something i have not yet seen much of, for how possible is it to make a person so uncomfortable, perhaps to the point of aggression, and then take their photograph?

boltanski

"i thinkwe all have somebody who is dead inside of us. A dead child. I remember the little Christian who is dead inside of me"
~~these are the words spoken by the artist christian boltanski that are so relevant to me and my own work........ In my most recent body of work, i deal with my own childhood, through representations, like glimmers, of collected images. my photographic endeavors aspire to re- present, as boltanski does in so many of his photographs, something from the past and bring it into the present. A series of photographs that i select appear, as in a dream that jumps from one scene to the next, like a flashback of my past. it is as if i wish to live and photograph through my younger self......
contrary to many of boltanski's works though, my presentation is more arbitrary. there is no real single mood or emotion seen in the cluster of photographs, no organization. boltanski uses photographs in a theartrical way to evoke emotion; his installations draw on pathos in a universal manner. the images of the children of the holocaust for example, illuminated by strings of light bulbs, serve as a memorial to the ghosts of the children. the term "momento mori" has often been used to describe his work, which immediately creates an air of sadness for me without even having to look at the work. by contrast, my work is really only sad for me because i am no longer that person who originally took those photographs.
(to be continued.....)

brightly colored backpacks

Driving to class the other night i intently listened to NPR radio. i caught the end of an interview/story on citizenship and education in our country....

A man had come to our country to work to support his family. He worked hard and sent the money home, while he lived alone near his job. He dreamt of higher education. Upon completing high school level education and applying to colleges, he was accepted to a couple. Yet the system stood in his way. Although he was a legal citizen and had all his papers, there was some red tape bullshit about his visa being processed, which would end up taking a few years, and would prevent him from receiving any financial aid. A vision of loneliness was painted in my mind at hearing his tale; he so wanted to better himself. but setting an example for his children and gaining financial opportunity was a dream so close but so far. the interviewer described how everyday the man worked at the top of a tall building right next to a community college, and how he watched the students walking around campus with their brightly colored backpacks.........

i envisioned the backpack as a symbol of education, and began to think about how much some people take it for granted. as i wait for my own school monies to come in, and think about this semester and the one to follow (which will be my last) i wonder what will become of me. life throws so many obstacles that may be seen as a hinderance, may make you want to give up, or may make you try harder. right now my biggest obstacle is living off of campus, not always having a babysitter but constantly needing to get to the internet. and of course being poor is a given. i just cant wait to get my film in the mail, so i can begin shooting more and taking out my frustration through my camera. though i sometimes feel uninspired, unmotivated or disheartened (is that a word??), i am so grateful to have my "brightly colored backpack".

all this writing is now making me feel inspired............

my projections

One of these photographs is my own personal favorite, and the other is the one perceived as the most successful ( by a small responsive audience).
The girl under the tree was received as something no longer a photograph. Its lack of edges within its square frame ( as compared to some of the other images where the sharp lines of the projected slide can be seen) seemed to create a closed world sense of viewing. I believe also that its straight on composition drew some viewers in more so than those in the series which were shot more at an angle. Other viewers still, enjoyed the fact that some images appeared to be lit from behind, as if by a tv, and the sharp lines of the projection added to that.

The other image is one of the original few that initially inspired the whole project. For me, it is a feeling that i get from a photo that leads me to choose it. More than that feeling of nostalgia, (which of course is difficult to relate to viewers being that my memories are not personal to them) it is the light and shadow that is painted, the ambiguity, and the mystery.

i intend to further distinguish specific feelings through groupings of images, and to do so by looking within each individual image for that particular emotion.

photo diary

washing the dishes this evening
(miles is in his swing looking at me and pooping while i write this)
i see out the window a leafy weed creating a shadow on the brick wall of the garage, as if someone had put a spotlight on in.
(miles is getting angry now)
i thought about taking a picture of it and washed a couple more dishes .
when i looked up again the shadow was gone. 6:43. the sun moved in just a few minutes.

following this missed photo-op , i realized the recurring theme in my work; action and reaction. had i taken that photograph, i probably would have titled it "washing the dishes". it is not often anymore that i go looking for something to photograph, but instead that i am engaged in one activity and become incited to take a picture, that may or may not have anything to do with what i was initially doing.

this is essentially the premise of my photo diary project, which i began last january when i died some sheer curtains "mint green" and they came out turquois. this action became symbolic of what i thought of as "the beginning of my domestication," and so i took a picture of the stains of dye on a sheet to commemorate the occurrence .

aside from the project i already intend to continue in senior portfolio(which is something quite different), i would also like to keep "photo diary-ing" perhaps here in the blog. where as before i hand wrote little notes to go with each image, maybe i will update my methods to the include the internet.

food stamps

i am so drawn to those buildings downtown where the upper stories are either filled in with brick, boarded up, or rusted shut. a faded business sign is all that is left of what the building contained , and the first level sells cheap knock-offs of designer handbags. the long since out-of-business department stores which were once frequented by mostly rich white ladies have now become little beauty shops owned by asian families that sell wigs, oil sheen, and cocoa butter, and markets that sell fish and fried chicken. the "beautification" process that is currently happening leaves buildings stripped or cut in half, their skeletons exposed, with each layer of material showing like layers of the earth. most of their histories are demolished or forgotten. i ponder at the layers of people all running around amidst these giant brick ghosts, all busy making the city run. i drive by spectating at those at the bus stop, those walking to work, and those living in the doorways, and i wonder at the histories each one of them holds. i want to project images of the people on the vast darkness of the antiquated windows with painted over glass and missing panes.
today is wednesday and i tried to apply for food stamps but the office of social services and public health was closed.

felix gonzalez torres

the cuban- american artist felix gonzalez torres dealt ideas of impermanence, specifically through audience interaction, in his simple yet romantic work. large stacks of paper squares offered as souvenirs to the viewers gave new meaning to the appropriated earlier minimalist style. Though, like the concepts of minimalism, the work is style about the viewer's experience of the work in its space, the perishable material make each geometric form more ephemeral. Similarly, his enormous piles of candy also slowly transform as one person after another takes away piece by piece, speaking to notions of the ever-evolving state of art, or of an individual work of art. on a more personal note, the candy makes the silent statement; " you are taking a piece of candy from an AIDS infected homosexual."

the idea of the keepsake, which will gradually fade and eventually disappear completely speaks to me in terms of my own work in dealing with the idea of the photograph itself. you can hold a small photograph in your hand. you can take it with you. it is a palpable fragment of someone's life, yet will ultimately cease to exist, unless reproduced. and yet then it becomes something new, altered from its original state.