These are my two images I entered into the anderson juried show

NEW ARTIST POST: 3/29/10 HELEN JONES

Helen Jones is a local Photographer in Norfolk, Virginia with a studio space at the Hermitage Museum and Gardens. I chose to write about her pictures because my fiance always teases me because I take a lot of pictures of trees. For whatever reason i am always drawn to their beauty and complexity. 


Her series is called Norfolk's Urban Forest, she describes the function of trees, what they do and how the benefit us. This is not her reasoning for photographing them. She is inspired by the power that trees possess. "It is, instead, the iconic power trees have always possessed that excites me. When I travel to distant lands, I'm always drawn to photograph this power trees create in a landscape. They comfort or inspire. They conjure up fear or suggest the complexity of age. They also symbolize a land, its people and their stewardship of the specific piece of earth they occupy."


I really appreciated the way she speaks and I feel like she says how I feel about the trees that I photograph. They have some kind of power that draws me to wonder how long it has stood and what worlds it would have seen if it could. 


The photograph on the left is my favorite because the trees are engulfed by this vine that seems to be protecting it.

IDEA POST: 3/25/2010 Changes and Time

Since my last meeting and critique I have been trying to discover what I am going to do with this project. My focus is on time and change and it is interesting to talk about these topics but they can go on forever on different tangents.

Paul and I discussed how time goes by in different ways:
1. Most popular thought is that time is linear. This is how we all generally think of time.
2. TIme is also circular. Like how flowers bloom, die and then bloom again. Or like how ice can melt and then freeze again.

I want to bring the focus of the changes down to the idea of time.. time passing by and how time passes and things change. When a person sees the change that had occurred they wonder about the time that went by and what they missed. I think of this being similar to how sometimes when I sleep in late I wake up and realize that the sun is already high in the sky. I realize I missed half the day and wonder where the time went. For me this is all about the realization of time being wasted or missed. It is not a sad thing.. it is just a higher awareness of time.

VISITING LECTURE: 3/25/10 Hamza Walker

Hamza Walker
Hamza Walker visited VCU as the Juror for the Anderson Gallery Student Exhibition. Walker is the Director of Education and Associate Curator for the Renaissance Society at the University of Columbia. The Renaissance Society is a non collected museum that is devoted to showing contemporary artists and their work in their amazing 3500 square foot gallery.

The Renaissance Society was opened in 1915 and showed artists like Pablo Picasso, Diet Mondrian and Cindy Sherman. Recently the gallery has shown artists such as Kara Walker and Felix Gonzalez - Torres.
Walker is "known beyond Chicago't art scene not only for his innovative curatorial work but also for his wide-ranging thinking and writing about contemporary art." - From theUniversity of Chicago magazine online.

The 3500 square foot gallery at the Renaissance Society is a wide open space that Walker transforms for every show he orchestrates in the space. He showed us examples of shows and how the space transforms. Walls move and it looks completely new with each new show. It was interesting to hear him talk about some of the shows he has put together. Such as a show about black art, everyone told him not to do it, but he did it anyways.

As the juror for the Anderson gallery student exhibition this lecture was also for the purpose of explaining his decisions about his choices for the show. Walker was interesting to listen to because he is very lighthearted. He described some of his decisions as " I just had to.." with a hearty laugh. It seems he choose some pieces because they were out there and bizarre. He also chose pieces based on their relation to other images by other artists. It was interesting to see how he saw things.. he described how one piece would comment the other and he just had to put them together. The photograph above is Cassie Mulheron's work about identifying as a race. He was intrigued by the painting of the face and how it related to similar images in the show that was of tribal face painting.

That is how he choose the show, by pairing similar things together. Congratulations to all the Photo Seniors whose work got accepted!

VISITING ARTIST 3/11/10 Sanford Biggers

Sanford Biggers is a LA native living in NYC. His work is a combination of scultpure, performance and other various medias. Most of his works involve alot of preparation and are heavily involved in the processes of making them. Biggers has attended many residencies and had living in many major cities in America as well as Japan.

One of the first pieces that he showed us was a linoleum floor that he laid with a design. This floor was meant to be used for break dancing and biggers was interested in showing the space created and the way a space is treated. The square he designed from break dancing became a kind of a scared space to those dancers that same way that temple and churches are sacred to other people. This floor is show in galleries with all the wear and tear of it being danced on, and occasionally it was danced on with in the gallery spaces.

One of my other favorite things that he showed us was a video. It was two screens side by side showing "Middle Class America. " This was a collaboration he did with a white artist and they took home videos from when they were young and took similar scenes and put them together as a movie. It really just shows that even though they are different colors their families were no different from one another.

Pictured above is a glass piece called Lotus. The flower petals are actually diagrams of slave shifts formed into a photograph. It speaks to peaceful religions as it is the shape of a gong and how it is a circle. It is an intense image that is a strong reminder of what happened in the past.

Sanford Biggers work is so vast it is had to describe him in just a few words. His work covers ideas of race, social standings of the past and black culture.

NEW ARTIST POST: 3/22/10 Sue Williams

The age of Aquarius, 2009, oil and acrylic on canvas 42 x 52 inches.

newamericancentury.org, 2005, oil on acrylic on canvas, 72 x 84 inches.

Sue Williams

www.davidwirner.com/resourses/40608/sw_PR_final.pdf

I have read many different articles trying to wrap my head around what these pieces by Sue Williams are about. "The long history of bloody interventions and brutal colonialism perprtrated globally by the most powerful nation," this quote was in a passage that was trying to explain what these pieces mean. Really, it goes straight over my head. 

I was attracted to this work because it has a very Dr. Suess like look to it. It is bright, shapely and bubbly, it has loose outlines of a darker color, and colors paired together to make the designs pop. It is interesting that from afar these pieces are attractive curvy designs. When approaching the piece you see that these designs are like intestines. The look like bodily bits and pieces and wrap and link together to form this long thriving twisting things in the painting.

The combination of the cartoon and childish nature with the grotesique figures that seem to move around the canvas create a strange balance that I am not sure what it means. I would guess that in simple meaning it really talks about this combination and contrast that I described.

NEW ARTIST POST: 3/8/10 Inka Essenhigh

Green Goddess 11, 2009, oil on canvas

Moon and Tide, 2009, oil on canvas

Yellow Fall, 2007 Oil on Canvas

The snow at night, 2008, oil on canvas 68 x 74 inches. 

Inka Essenhigh

Inka Essenhigh was born in Belfonte, Pennslyvania in 1969. She attended Columbus College of Art and design and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She now currently lives and works in New York City. 

ttp://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/sep/20/guide-to-painting-inka-essenhigh "Artist Inka Essenhigh on how she paints" This article by Essenhigh describes her love for painted that started when she was a child. She grew up also being involved with ceramics. She paints primarily with oil paints although for a while she painted with enamel to have a break from the traditional source of oil paints. The fluidity of her images is her style.

Essenhigh creates these imaginary characters in surreal settings. Her colors are beautiful and there are many little details in the work. everytime I look at her works I see something new.

IDEA POST: 3/11/10 Irreversible Processes

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5164
"What is time? One Physicist Hunts for the Ultimate theory"

In this article Sean Carroll discusses ideas of time. He is interested in what he calls the "arrow of time." The arrow of time is his description of the way that we in our culture relate to time. We see time as a past, present and future. We can remember the past and know the present but we cannot "remember" the future.

"Time doesn't exist, it is a human concept, our own way of measuring change. There are irreversible processes, there are things that happened like you can turn an egg into an omelet but you cannot change an omelet into an egg." The idea of irreversible processes is the thing I found most interesting out of this article. Time is a strange thing because we can easily say that time does not exist, but when one accepts it as reality how does one explain their own world. Our lives revolve around time, clocks, deadlines etc. I am not sure how to explain my own existence without the reality of time.

Irreversible processes seem to me to be some kind of a clue to what time is. The example of the egg being able to turn into an omelet but not back to the same thing it started from. I guess that starts to talk about the elements that make up the object but at the same time it shows that we cannot reverse a situation.

This idea really gets me thinking about the changes that occur that people seem to not notice. Time can pass by and I miss things all the time. I water my plants but i forget sometimes and come back to find a little one dead and dried up. I completed missed that it was dying, it may be insignificant but it shows my unawareness and distraction.

IDEA POST: 3/4/10 what is a waste of time?

While searching for ideas and quotes to influence and inform my ideas of time I have been finding there is alot of discussion that time isn't real. I happened upon Griffin Davis's Facebook status that said, "What exactly is a waste of time, when time is only a concept?"

Time is like God, we are raised talking about both of them and the truth in their existence, as a child there is no question about the existence. They are real, but as we get older people start to question their beliefs. Some people decide they don't believe in God and somehow I don't know what I believe. It seems like I can't say its not real because I want god to be real but I dont know how to explain that he could be.

Time is different than that because I never considered  its existence until now.  I don't know how it cannot be real but it really is just a theory of the changes that occur in the work. This concept places us all on a timeline along with our actions and plans all on a timeline. I am not sure how to explain or imagine the world without the concept of time tying what had happened to what will happen.

William Penn said, " Time is what we want most, but what we use the worst." I thought this quote was brilliant until I thought about the existence of time. It is strange that we can desire something that is just a concept.

The broken clock is a comfort, it helps me sleep tonight. Maybe it can start tomorrow, from stealing all my time. This is a lyric from Lifehouse's song Broken. I thought the first line was brilliant and insightful and then I learned it was from a song, which just makes me feel silly that I thought it was so deep. But i guess music can be in some cases an art form and a true form of expression when it is not confused with the pop/rap cultures and lady gaga craziness.

These random different quotes have all started me thinking about what is time and what do I care about time. What do I want to validate in my images? Am I trying to prove something? Im not sure yet...

NEW ARTIST POST: 3/1/2010 Scott Mcfarland

Scott McFarland

Born in 1975 in Canada

Earned a BFA at University of British Columbia

Represented by Monte Clark Gallery, Regan Projects and Union Gallery.

Portion of a interview available on http://neditpasmoncoeur.blogspot.com/2009/04/q-scott-mcfarland-digital-gardens.html

The interviewer in this segment (link above) asks Scott Mcfarland if the way he produces his images is similar to the way that a gardener prunes his garden. Mcfarland believes that his process is similar because of the process both the photographer and the gardener is one where this are chosen to be put together because they fit and belong seamlessly in the setting. He works with shooting the images multiple times during the day and season to create these surreal images that show each plant completely in bloom. He is not afraid of post production editing and I really love this.

The image with the cactus is my favorite. There are little clues that let you know this image is fabricated, like the shadows on the ground around the cactus. 

This is an artist that Paul introduced me to because he thought he process is similar to the though process i have been having with my work. I plan to approach my shotting in a similar way and take control of time in the photographs to show how quickly time passes and to illustrate the absurdity of trying to control it.