NEW ARTIST POST: 4/5/10 Robert and Shana Parkeharrison

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

This couple that makes the art together always wins my vote. Their mixed media creations combine performance art with art that can be hung on the wall. The open ended narratives enacted in each of these images become a new canvas for the viewers imagination to run wild with the story they started for you. These images are romantically tragic. The character in the scenes are attempting impossible feats. The one where he is standing on stills ready to take flight with his man made wings always reminds me of children who are honestly trying to fly like peter pan as they jump off of something just a little too high for safety. He is expressing this same desire as a child would trying to honestly make the impossible happen.

The open narratives within these stories are great as well because I really get to make up my own story to why men are hanging from clouds with giant fish hooks. Its all terribly romantic and i want to look at these images all day  and make up my own fairy tales to go with them. 

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.

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.

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.

NEW ARTIST POST: 2/22/2010 Mile Coolidge

These photographs are from a series called "Street Furniture" by Miles Coolidge from 2008. I was immediately intrigued by these images because of the perfect/imperfect compositions they have. I mean a perfect composition because the subject (the furniture) are lines up perfectly in the photograph, but they are imperfect because they make your head turn when you look at them. Typically everything we look at you find your balance off of the horizon line, in these image the horizon line is screwed and the viewer tries to see it the correct way (usually by turning the head to make the horizon straight).

The questionable positioning of the elements in the photograph raise questions. I question why they are off balance and why the furniture is in the locations they are. Soon I realize these pieces of furniture are someones trash. Like seeing photographs of abandoned houses, these abandoned pieces of furniture make me wonder why they are being discarded and i wonder what memories are attached to these items.

NEW ARTIST POST: 2/14/2010 Kenneth Josephson

Polapan, 1973, from Ken Josephson portfolio, 1973/1975

Chicago, 1964



Stockholm, 1967
 
Anissa, Chicago, 1969

New York State, 1970, from Ken Josephson portfolio, 1973/1975

Kenneth Josephson
Represented by: Stephen Daiter Gallery http://www.stephendaitergallery.com/
Website: none

When looking through the list of photographers on the Museum of Contemorary Photography website this artist was the first that i clicked on today and I was amazed from the start. This photographer was born in 1931 in Detroit, Michigan. He started used the family camera at age 12 and purchased his own 4x5 two years later. Josephson's work is straightforward and in your face and that is what i love about them. It is not hard to figure out what is going on in the images but it keeps the audience asking "why?" and therefore retains their attention.

I love the style behind the three photographs where another photograph is used in the composition. It sees to tell a story of a past or a future of the location. It also seems to tell a secret or a story, so something that once way. They are just really visually appealing to me. The photograph of the little girl is almost alittle confusing when looking at it because it is hard to figure out which way the image was taken, but that is something that keep the viewers eyes lingering on it and asking questions.

The other two of the car and the sewer cap, i love just because he found this kind of evidence in the environment. i connect with these because they touch with the way I think when i go out to shoot. I like to wander and shoot the unexpected and the unseen beauty.

I really enjoy the direct connection with the viewer that is created with the composition. I hope my images can relate to the viewer in a similar way.

NEW ARTIST POST: 2/7/2010 Mark Ruwedel

Northern Pacific #15, 2006, Photograph

Central Pacific # 18, 1994, photograph

Union Pacific #34, 1995, photograph

DeathValley: Ancient Footpath Along the Shore of a Departed Lake, 1995, Photograph

Marc Ruwedel

website: unknown

Interview:http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/galleries/along_the_western_rails/

Gallery Representation: Museum of Contemporary Photography

"The details. The weather. Getting off the Interstates, far from fast food stops. Discovery, disappointment, getting lost, the occasional bear or coyote. Being alone. A sense of the histories inscribed on the surface of the land."

- The interviewer asked Ruwedel what we are all missing out on that he is taking in the photographs. The quote above was his response. 

Mark Ruwedel was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1953. 

"Combining photographs of ancient trails and remnants of 12,000-year-old ceremonial sites with modern tire tracks and roads, Ruwedel questions how different these intrusions really are. " This is a description of his work on the MOCP website. He compares how the environment changes and how things we have created, like train tracks and systems are falling away just the same. I appreciate these photographs because of exploration that seems to happen during the creation of them. 

I hope to echo this exploration in the photographs I create this semester. I want my photographs to seem to be something  people would walk by everyday but not notice. i want to bring the passage of time visually on top of my images. 

NEW ARTIST POST: 2/1/2010 Beate Gutschow

Beate Gutschow

website: unknown

interview with Creative Face magazine: link to interview

gallery representation unknown.

About Beate Gutschow: She was born in Mainz, Germany in 1970. Gutschow went to the School of Fine Arts in Oslo, Germany, as well as, the School of Fine Arts in Hamburg, Germany. She is widely know and has show her work across Europe and the United States. She took part in an Artist Residency at ArtSway and has shown her work at the Contemporary Museum of Photography in Chicago.

About Beate Gutschow's work: Gutschow's works is really about challenging the ideas of truth and fiction. In this series, LS Gutschow has constructed images of landscapes. In the images of "natural landscapes" she has collaged images to create the perfect landscape based of the rules of painting landscape from the 17th and 18th century masters. The construction and composition of these images give us clues to the "created" reality that Gutschow is presenting to us. The nature landscapes are cast after painting from the 17th and 18th century while the building landscapes are fabricated and have no clues to an actual location. Also the building landscapes were shot with black and white film and the grain becomes an evidence to the changes in the imagery. Gutschow expresses that she wants the viewer to question it, to ask questions about what it is, what it can mean or be.  

 “Landscape (nature) never looked like this. In my work ideal means not to exclude the

ugliness, it means to construct reality.”- I like this quote from Gutschow because she speaks of creating Reality... instead of creating fiction or a false view.

"What's important to me is the relationship between reality and fiction. I'm also interested in the expectation we have of photography: that, no matter what else, photographs represent a slice of reality. At first glance my photos seem to do this too, but then you quickly sense that something's not right. What you see in these images can't be attributed to any particular place, and eventually you realise that this is not a homogeneous representation of reality. " - From interview link above.

I find that I really appreciate this work because it does make me question it. I wonder where this could exist and what the people are doing within the photographs. i found myself comparing the black and white building landscapes and the nature landscapes to each other. And I really like this artist because she is creating something that never existed in our world but she still calls is reality. It reminds me of my own work because I am trying to piece together scenes to show the movement of time. Even though she is trying to create questions of authenticity in her work, I am trying to create questions of time and where it all goes if you waste it.