Jane Fulton Alt

David Halliday on Seeing, Really Seeing

2012-01-30T07:32:00.000-08:00

Do you want elegance? Check out the work of David Halliday. I have, and did at the newly opened show at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. David's quietly elegant still lives are beautifully composed and have a meditative quality that, if you have ever tried, is difficult to achieve.

I am finishing a wonderfully written book titled, The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, a book that uses baseball as the medium for exploring life's challenges.There was a passage I found really compelling about doing and being. "The shortstop has worked so hard for so long that he no longer thinks. Nor does he act. By this I mean that he does not generate action. He only reacts, the way a mirror reacts when you wave your hand before it...Sophie told him to relax, stop thinking, be himself, be the ball, don't try too hard. You could only try so hard not to try too hard before you were right back around to trying too hard. And trying hard, as everyone told him, was wrong, all wrong...The shortstoop has worked so hard for so long that he no longer thinks - that was just the way to phrase it. You couldn't choose to think or not think. You could only choose to work or not work. And hadn't he chosen to work? And wasn't that what would save him now? When he walked onto this field tomorrow he would carry a whole reservoir of work with him, the last three years of work with Schwartzy, the whole lifetime of work before that, of focusing always and only on baseball and how to become better. It was not flimsy,that lifetime of work. He could rely on it."

Anyone who has tried to compose a photograph knows what this is about. I have made many many images that feel contrived, trite and overworked. What I find so amazing about David's work is its presence, it's meditative quality and how we are able to experience these still lives without a middleman. David has somehow taken himself out of the picture and allowed us to have a primary experience with what we are seeing. No small feat.

From the Ogden Museum website...

"A master of light, New Orleans photographer David Halliday, produces lush and elegant images that are both classical and modern. Using window light to illuminate his subjects, Halliday’s direct formal approach offers a fresh take on the historic art prototypes of still life and portraiture. The simplicity of his visual language produces images that transcend time."

The Ogden Museum has had many wonderful shows...be sure to stop there if you are visiting New Orleans. Their exhibitions never disappoint!

Christopher Porche West of New Orleans

2012-01-27T07:35:00.000-08:00

To walk by Christopher Porche West's studio is to flirt with the muses. There is something about his space that pulls you in, capturing a sense of the soul of New Orleans. When entering into his studio (or to my mind, an installation) one is reminded of the Joseph Campbell boxes. Well aged architectural artifacts encase his photographs with candles scattered through out, creating a sacred environment and offering a testimony to New Orleans's rich heritage. Tucked into the Bywaters neighborhood, it was a treat to behold. West's work is also on display at Snug Harbor on Frenchmen's Street but to get the full effect, you must visit his studio.

"Porché West’s artful expresssions exists at the nexus of photography and sculpture, the point where photography and sculpture converge. Dramatic and thought-provoking photographs are “housed” within salvaged architectural elements adorned with thought-provoking, symbolic objects. The net effect is additive - the sum is greater than the parts - photographs encorported within sculpture deepen the meaning and message of the art."

"It is Porché West’s contention that flat photographs fail to achieve the richness and dimensionality of photographic sculpture. Though a framed photograph can tell a good story, a photograph “housed” in sculpture gives a more nuances and deep narrative. Salvaged architectural debris door casings, flooring, window frames, knobs and pulls give the photograph a sense of place, an authenticity that comes from being at home in the soul of the artist’s works."

"Porché West’s assemblage is cultural “curatorialism” masked as art. The simple behaviors and beliefs of ordinary people are universal and easily understood. Religious faith, death and burial rituals, celebration and suffering are comprehended, if not shared, by all humanity. To see one’s own emotions in the face of a Haitian child or the hands of an elderly woman in New Orleans, is to be reminded that that which binds us together is greater than that which divides us. We are in essence, one."

”

Jennifer Shaw and Her Hurricane Story

2012-01-23T19:48:00.000-08:00

Given that I am in New Orleans, I thought I would stick with the New Orleans theme. One of the most creative bodies of work to come out if the Katrina disaster was the work of Jennifer Shaw. The timing of the hurricane and the birth of her child collided and she told her story with the camera.

We left in the dark of night. 2007

In her words...

"I was nine months pregnant and due in less than a week when Hurricane Katrina blew into the Gulf. In the early hours of August 28, 2005 my husband and I loaded up our small truck with two cats, two dogs, two crates full of negatives, all our important papers and a few changes of clothes. We evacuated to a motel in southern Alabama and tried not to watch the news. Monday, August 29 brought the convergence of two major life changing events; the destruction of New Orleans and the birth of our son. It was two long months and 6000 miles on the road before we were able to return home."

At the motel in Andalusia we tried not to watch the news. 2007

The Next Morning We Turned on the TV

"Hurricane Story is a depiction of our family’s evacuation experience - the birth, the travels and the return. These photographs represent various elements of our ordeal. The project began as a cathartic way to process some of the lingering anger and anxiety over that bittersweet journey. It grew into a narrative series of self-portraits in toys that illustrate my experiences and emotional state during our time in exile."

At 3:47 a boy was born. 2006

In spite of it all there’s no place like home. 2007

Jennifer is one of the founders of the New Orleans Photo Alliance, a photographic organization that was started after the Katrina disaster and has blossomed into a wonderful organization supporting the photographic arts. NOPA also sponsorsPhotoNola, the December celebration of photography in New Orleans. It is a fabulous event in an amazing city.

The Hurricane Story is available thru the Chin Music Press. More of Jennifer's work can be seen HERE.

Debbie Flemming Caffery and Louisiana

2012-01-20T08:39:00.000-08:00

It all started with this photograph...

Harry's Hands

I saw it at the Catherine Edelman Gallery years ago in Chicago and it took my breath away. It was such a strong, soulful image.
I heard via other photographers that the artist, Debbie Flemming Caffery, was offering workshops out of her home in Breaux Bridge, Louisana. I signed up. I was her only student and we had a blast of a week.It was the first time I had attended a workshop and the first time spending time in Louisiana. Needless to say, I fell in love head over heels with all things Louisiana!

street art, New Orleans December 2011

So much of my experience there was about the culture, the food, the people and the climate. There are times I wish I were a writer as that experience and the multiple visits I made since have been seared into my memory and senses. It would take me hours and hours to write eloguently about my many adventures there.

Here are a few photographs from Debbie's Polly series...

© Debbie Flemming Caffery ~ Polly

"An extraordinary photographic project began one day in 1984, when Debbie Fleming Caffery, a Louisiana native, saw Polly, a black woman in her seventies, on the porch of a cabin she'd been driving past for more than a year. The interior was lit only by the sun that came through its small windows and the flow from a fireplace that had left a sooty pall over everything, but it became Caffery's favorite place to visit and photograph. 'You know when you become consumed with a project?', the photographer asks. 'I went there so often and I thought about her so much--I would dream about her. Going to Polly's was like being vacuumed into a feeling of security and warmth. I would rather have gone to her house than any place during those years.' This devotion is evident in the photographs, and it's clearly returned by Polly, who opens herself to the camera." (from Debbie's website).

© Debbie Flemming Caffery ~ from Polly portfolio

...and her Sugar Cane Series

© Debbie Flemming Caffery ~ Sugar Cane fires

I had so many adventures while I was there. They are all coming back to me now because I am headed back to New Orleans and will be going to Breaux Bridge to visit Debbie and take another bayou tour with Norbitt.

The following photographs are just a few of the images I created while I was there...(minus the Look and Leave work from post Katrina)

© Jane Fulton Alt ~ Portrait of Debbie

©Jane Fulton Alt; self portrait created after a visit to the slaughter house which then turned into the series, Matters of the Heart.

Smoking Cotton Gin, who knew smoke and fire were going to figure so prominently in my work back then

If you would ever consider going to Louisiana for Mardi Gras, they do it differently in Cajun country where they go around to houses on horseback looking for the chicken for the gumbo. "Cajun filmmaker Pat Mire gives us an inside look ... Every year before Lent begins, processions of masked and costumed revelers, often on horseback, go from house to house gathering ingredients for communal gumbos in communities across rural southwest Louisiana. The often-unruly participants in this ancient tradition play as beggars, fools, and thieves as they raid farmsteads and perform in exchange for charity or, in other words, "dance for a chicken."

I may not be posting for a couple of weeks...but then maybe I will!

Stay posted.

Steven Barritt

2012-01-18T07:42:00.000-08:00

I just love Rembrandt portraits so I was thrilled to come across Steven Barritt's work, Anachronisms.

Johnathan

In Steven Barritt's words...

"Anachronism - "The representation of someone as existing in other than chronological, proper or historical order."

"This series of images aims to explore the historical and contemporary relationship between painting and photography. Inspired by the paintings of Rembrandt and other old masters I wanted to recreate the mood and feel of those paintings within a contemporary photographic image. At the same time as emulating the tactility of a painting I wanted to retain the basic precept of photography in its ability to render exceptional clarity, definition and subtleties of colour."

Philippos

Nicholas

"The sitters are all young artists, musicians or actors and represent a new generation of artistic talent who have broad concerns in many areas of study. They represent a return to renaissance feeling where specialisation, the dominant thinking of the last century or more, is slowly giving way to a more holistic view of the world where science and technology are perceived through more artistic, poetic, philosophical and mathematical eyes. Photography is a representation of this feeling being a culmination of Art, Science and technology and provides the perfect medium to express this sensibility."

Inzajeano

"The sitters are deliberately made to appear out of their ordinary clothes and are posed and styled to elevate them from their everyday appearance. This provides the sitters with a noble and dignified appearance and generates an ambiguity of time, giving them a timeless and yet of a time quality. The ennobling and immortalising of these young men creates an interesting dialogue between the historical context of production in portraiture and the contemporary value of photographic portraiture. All paintings and photographs can at best hope to produce is a superficial surface rendering of the object. These images are my subjective interpretation of the sitter and yet a sense of the character of each sitter comes through the images."

Alexander

Steven

Oh how I would love to have my portrait taken by Steven!

Jennifer Hudson

2012-01-15T09:32:00.000-08:00

"I just wish I could take the pain from your body, and put it into mine." How many times have we felt this with our loved ones?
What is so incredible to me is that Jennifer Hudson has actually created a body of work that was inspired by this thought. Jennifer was in the Critical Mass Top 50 this year and her work is haunting and mesmerizing. Her imagination is fertile and we are all the beneficiaries.

In Jennifer's words...

"Medic is a sensitive, intricate glimpse into human relationships during times of need and recovery and a complex, heartfelt exploration of sacrificial love. The work began wholly on one sentence whispered by my husband while we were enduring deeply frightening times together. He held my hand, lay close to me and said softly "I just wish I could take the pain from your body, and put it into mine." I have been fortunate to know incredible love all my life, but at that moment I became suddenly and intensely aware of the magnificent power that exists between people who care for one another. When I was anxious and fighting to fall asleep each night, I began to invent miracle machines; contraptions that heal, deliver hope, legacy, remedy, and redemption."

"Each image from Medic is a thoughtful invention, strange and tender, revealing facets of the delicate human heart. In ten isolated chambers we are witnesses to emotional happenings, exchanges, confrontations, and life decisions. I became particularly fascinated with illustrating the depth of a love relationship by portraying only the individual in many images, exploring the weight of partnership, the sacrificial life perspective, and the burdened, selfless decision-maker."

"In some chambers, we witness life changing moments; mercy, healing, humbling choices, memories recorded and legacies written. In others we see an exchange; affection, tenderness, and sacrifice. In the making of this work, I sought to begin to understand some of the most rare and beautiful relationships in the world, to expose their most frail, vulnerable moments, times of great intensity, and most cherished inner workings."

"Medic is a dark and sentimental collection of stories about great tests in life, purpose, and the most painful, but also the most glorious times to love."

Jennifer has a wonderful blog with more of her work AND an amazing video where she describes the creation of the space in which she photographs this amazing body of work. Click HERE to see it.

Thank you, Jennifer, for putting our heartfelt thoughts into the visual realm.

Jan Groover's inspiration

2012-01-12T06:48:00.001-08:00

There was a post on facebook a few days ago about the passing of Jan Groover, a fabulous photographer whose work was very informative to me in my early explorations of photography. I searched online for more information and then was not sure if it were true as there were people still "friending" her which seemed a bit odd. Well, this morning I read the official obituary in the New York Times here. The Wall Street Journal also ran an article on her titled, The Poetry of the Ordinary.

© Jan Groover

I have always loved her work and when I first started out taking photography courses at the local art center, one of the assignments was to pick a photographer you loved and try to emulate their style. I choose Jan's work. She composed these incredibly beautiful still lives from very ordinary kitchen utensils.

© Jan Groover

I happily went thru my archives of old prints this morning and found a few pieces I made in the 90's that were the outcome of the assignment. I took it a bit further by adding some color to the silver gelatin prints.

© Jane Fulton Alt

© Jane Fulton Alt

"I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that's been done by others before us." Steve Jobs

Thank you Jan.

B Inspired by Jeff Harris

2012-01-09T18:32:00.001-08:00

The Creative Spirit ~ Steve Jobs

2012-01-09T06:30:00.000-08:00

5 YEARS AGO TODAY, the iPHONE was introduced by Steve Jobs in S.F.

photograph from the Apple Store in Oaxaca, Mexico.

I just finished reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. It is an amazing read about Steve Jobs, the genius behind all of the Apple products I utilize to express my creative self.

Jobs was an uncompromising, clear headed genius who has changed the world forever. He was NEVER driven by money, but had a vision of finding the sweet spot where art and technology meet. He pushed people work and create beyond what they thought was possible. In the book he states...

"What drove me? I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that's been done by others before us. I didn't invent the language or mathematics I use. I make little of my own food, none of my own clothes. Everything I do depends on other members of our species and the shoulders that we stand on. And a lot f us want to contribute something back to our species and to add something to the flow. It's about trying to express something in the only way that most of know how...because we can't write Bob Dylan songs or Tom Stoppard plays. We try to use the talents we do have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation of all the contributions that came before us, and to add something to that flow. That's what has driven me."

"...They kept evolving, moving, refining their art. That's what I've always tried to do---keep moving. Otherwise, as Dylan says, if you're not busy being born, you're busy dying."

Obama Care in Action

2012-01-08T13:36:00.001-08:00

please share

Finding One's Way

2012-01-05T16:59:00.000-08:00

I just love this image. I took it years ago in Washington DC on the Mall in the winter. It has such a sense on mystery to it and expresses how I feel sometimes going thru life. I don't really have much to say other than I have been working tirelessly on my soon to be shown Mexican devotional pieces. It has been a labor of love with much revision and revamping.

I am in the middle of reading the Walter Isaacson’s bio of late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. It is an interesting read and one which stimulates much thought into how we see ourselves and our work. It is hard not to think about his obsession with perfection as I am creating these pieces that are all about imperfection!

Steve Jobs said: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary"

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

"We all have a short period of time on this earth. We probably only have the opportunity to do a few things really great and do them well. None of us has any idea how long we’re gong to be here nor do I, but my feeling is I’ve got to accomplish a lot of these things while I’m young."

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.... Stay hungry. Stay foolish!" (Stanford University commencement address, June 2005)

How Photographers Spend Their Time

2012-01-04T06:35:00.000-08:00

click chart to enlarge

This chart was created by A Photo Editor and I thought it was very telling. It also made me feel better as I have been lamenting on how I haven't been able to work on my encaustics since leaving the Ragdale residency. There are many facets being an artist and they are all equally important. It is lovely to create wonderful work but if it just sits in your studio, the cycle is not fulfilled. It must be seen by others. What are you doing to get your work seen?

for the new year

2012-01-03T09:16:00.000-08:00

a gentle reminder

We are all a work in progress...a few thoughts for the New Year

2011-12-30T05:28:00.000-08:00

I have just a few minutes to post before I am called away so will make this brief. I have been working on my Mexican "retablos" as of late and am constantly refining the work. I keep finding ways to improve it's presentation. I am collaborating with Luis Alberto Urrea, a wonderful writer who is providing text which I will be incorporating into the pieces, no small challenge!

I am reminded of the movie Ground Hog Day. It is about a weatherman who resisted and disliked his assignment of covering the annual Ground Hog Day only to find himself repeating the day over and over again until he gets it right....that is what it is like to create artwork and to live with awareness. We have the opportunity and challenge to do it better every moment, every day, every year.

Have a wonderful New Year!

Jesse Rieser ~ Christmas in America: Happy Birthday Jesus

2011-12-23T19:35:00.000-08:00

Jesse Rieser's "Christmas In America: Happy Birthday, Jesus" was one of the top 50 Critical Mass portfolios from this year. His work makes you do a double take on how our culture embraces Christmas and all the trappings. Enjoy the work...I know I did!

In his words...

"Beyond the glowing green and red lights, past the shimmering silvery tinsel, around the fragrant pine boughs, another Christmas lingers, a Christmas of contradictions."

"This Christmas is complex and at times, uncomfortable. It’s awkward and sometimes bleak. But it is also sincere and celebratory, colorful and creative."

"This is the Christmas I capture in this first chapter of a photographic exploration of the biggest event on the American calendar. I grew up in a secular home and at times felt like a Christmas outsider, never connected to the holiday’s religious importance, or its more extreme cultural trappings. But in these photos, I become a Christmas insider, working to discover and reveal what holiday magic, or mania, compels so many to devote thousands of hours to hanging lights, to carving and painting figurines, to building miniature villages, to converting their homes, yards, garages and cars into monuments to merriness."

"Initially inspired by the absurdity of a five story inflatable Santa who appeared to be guarding a tree lot, I have launched this survey of uniquely American Christmas traditions. “Christmas in America” is an unvarnished examination of the ways people mark the holiday’s meaning."

Jesse's work will be up at the Newspace Center for Photography in Portland, Oregon until December 30th.

Happy Holidays ~ Winter Solstice

2011-12-21T04:34:00.001-08:00

Tomorrow is Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, or the least amount of sunlight. It is really heart warming to see so many holiday lights decorating homes.

I mentioned that I was reading Driftless by David Rhodes. I just read an amazing paragraph ...

"Sometimes in the theater of winter, a day will appear with such spectacular mildness that it seems the season can almost be forgiven for all its inappropriate hostility, inconveniences, and even physical assaults. With a balmy sky overhead, melting snow underfoot, and the sound of creeks running, the bargin made with contrasts doesn't look so bad: to feel warm, one must remember cold; to experience joy, one must have known sorrow." David Rhodes in Driftless.

Yvette Meltzer ~ Picasso's Playground in Chicago

2011-12-19T05:42:00.000-08:00

I'd like to introduce you to some delightful work by fellow Evanstonian, Yvette Meltzer. These photographs sing and it seems like a wonderful portfolio to share this time of year. This work was produced by Yvette from her office window overlooking the Picasso Statue in downtown Chicago's Daley Plaza. Yvette's creativity and photographic eye are so strong, as she captures the spirit of childhood.

In Yvette's words...

"My office window overlooks Daley Plaza in Chicago in which the Picasso Statue stands. I have been captivated by the freedom and the spontaneity of children’s movements as they play on the Picasso Statue. The children there have a willingness to venture into the unknown, to explore with joy. Their free movements stand in sharp contrast to the photos that were taken of me as a child where I posed stiffly and often against my will. These children appeared to be living dolls which also tapped into my interest in dolls and doll houses which I also collect and photograph. I was also drawn to the interplay of color and light on the form of the sculpture which changes over the course of my eight hour day in the office. The images I captured are not staged but rather the spontaneous movements that I have viewed through my office window over the last three years.

I have been taking photographs of my family since age ten. Next I included my friends as subjects and gradually in my thirties, I turned the camera to people I did not know personally. My photography reflects my interest in people, the narratives of their lives, and the environments that shape them.

Children and youth have inspired my spirit and they continue to be the subject of many of the images which I have captured both locally and in my travels. This comes as no surprise to those who know me as I have been a life long children’s advocate whose professional career has focused on protecting the rights of children, working to keep their spirits free.

I viewed the Picasso sculpture as a playground on which the children were able to exercise their initiative, determination, confidence, and courage, as well as their muscles, as they climbed, often from a running start, away from their parents or grandparents or whatever adult accompanied them, motivated to interact with their environment. I see children as intrinsically strong, competent and powerful, and I think these images illustrate that belief."

You can see more of Yvette's work HERE.

Nelson Armour

2011-12-17T16:02:00.000-08:00

Nelson is a new member of our critique group and is proving to have a wonderful eye. The following work is from his travels to the Apostle Islands, located off the coast of northern Wisconsin.

In Nelson's words...

"Apostle Islands

In July of 2012 my wife and I charted a sailboat to explore the Apostle Islands. This National Lakeshore of the U.S. National Park Service constitutes twenty-two islands in Lake Superior within twenty miles of the northern coast of Wisconsin, off of Bayfield, Wisconsin. If you can picture the beauty of northern Wisconsin, transport these north woods into Lake Superior as numerous uninhabited islands with the exception of one.

Most of this series of photographs were taken on Julian Beach, the east side of the island. This beach faces directly into Lake Superior without the protection afforded by other islands. Thus, the storms of Lake Superior, huge and often frightening, bear down on this beach with high waves and gale force winds. The trees and driftwood on the beach bare the scares of these storms. Our morning on Julian was on a glorious summer day with a calm Lake Superior lapping on the beach. In exploring the beach, we also found as estuary colored by the tannic acid of decaying trees and organic matter. One final photograph was taken at dusk in Raspberry Bay, looking north at sundown into an eerily colored sky.

For me, photography is an act of artistically capturing something real. I attempt to see and frame a composition that will motivate a viewer to remain observing the image rather than quickly moving on. Many artists often spend considerable time in developing ideas and in executing their work. Yet, for some photographers obtaining an image occurs quickly, allowing little time to carefully compose the frame and consider thematic elements. In “post-production,” the term for digital darkroom work, the effort is often elaborate and time consuming, but the initial moment of creation can be brief. For these photographers, the challenge is to compress previous work, effort and study into a brief, click of the shutter."

You can see more of Nelson's work HERE.

There seems to be lots of art coming out of that state...I am currently reading a beautifully written book, Driftless by David Rhodes and it is about a small town of Words, Wisconsin. An amazing read...

Alan Leder ~ The Pod Project

2011-12-14T05:29:00.000-08:00

I will now take you into another realm....that of Alan Leder. Alan has many interesting bodies of work, including The Pod Project. His painting background clearly influences how he sees and interprets the world.
I will leave the rest for Alan to explain...

In Alan's works...

"In my photography, I tend to document and study images of natural forms and industry's detritus. I'm drawn to the elements of our known world as they are transcribed through the lensing of natural light. At the same time, I am transfixed by the unknowable world, all that glitters in the infinite dark space enveloping our blue planet.

Unable to see what the far distant future might hold for us, I can only imagine; I search for hints in mundane micro matter, for hidden glimpses of a nuclear core or the striated surface of a lifeless stellar mass. The yield is a re-animated crop of primal ovoid forms, invented "astral projections" at once beautiful and mysterious. I imagine these as transformative cosmic events from a galaxy far, far away. Perhaps that galaxy was ours."

Alan will be showing this work at the Bridgeport Art Center, 1200 West 35th Street , Chicago, scheduled to open in May of 2012. Be sure to check out his website HERE.

back from New Orleans

2011-12-12T11:39:00.000-08:00

Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold") is a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective state, conscious or unconscious, of being on the "threshold" of or between two different existential planes (from Wikipedia). That is what it is like to be in New Orleans. There is just something about that city that is like no other. I felt like Alice in Wonderland falling down the rabbit hole into another world of reality. For me it is a city unparalleled in its music, food, art and soul.

(all photos taken with my iphone)

Treme Creole Gumbo Festival featuring the actors from the HBO Treme show

Friday night on Frenchmen Street at Snug Harbor with Ellis Marsalis

3-6pm half price oysters everyday at Luke

John Boutte at d.b.a., the composer of the Treme theme song...he doesn't sing the song, he is the song!

The Contemporary Arts Center had some wonderful work...including

Kyle Bravo, 2011 Self Portrait, "Reaching"

Club S & S (Stephen Paul Day & Sibylle Peretti), suicide notes, 2011; Mixed Media on napkins

PhotoNola had many offerings for the weekend including a photogravure demonstration at Josephine Sacabo's studio and a Tintype exhibit at HomeSpace Gallery, which included a wet plate demonstration.
Josephine Sacabo giving photogravure demonstration

S. Gayle Stevens speaking about her work at HomeSpace Gallery

Bruce Schultz giving a wet plate demonstration

and I happily went home with a tintype portrait

Suzy Halpin ~ American's Beauty Show

2011-12-10T05:12:00.000-08:00

Every wonder about what it would be like to be back stage as models are getting ready for the "lime light?" Take a look at what Suzy Halpin has done. The black and white photographs are beautifully choreographed by Suzy's eye and timing with the release of the shutter button.

In Suzy's words...

"Voyeurism is an unkind word, but perhaps accurate. I have always wanted to be on the inside of people and understand what they are thinking and feeling. My mind has always created stories about the people I notice. The more interesting the person looks, the more interesting the story is. Now, spending my time so often behind the lens, I find I have even more questions as I look at each of my photographs, and my stories get even larger.

This series of ‘American Beauty’ is my latest attempt to understand a group of people who all share a common interest outside of my own interests. As I look at each of these images I notice the drastic contrast between the stylist and their model. Is there something to be learned from this? Does it inspire you to create? Is beauty silent? I wonder all of these questions and many more from these images. What do you wonder?

As always, I am always grateful and encouraged by the openness of the subjects of my photos. All of these people knew they were being photographed and I would thank each of them by name if I could."

You can see more of Suzy's work HERE.

New Orleans, PhotoNOLA and Prospect.2

2011-12-07T15:56:00.000-08:00

So many changes occured post Katrina, one of which was the formation of The New Orleans Photo Alliance. It has grown in leaps and bounds since 2006, offering many wonderful opportunities for photographers including juried exhibitions, workshops and educational programs. They also offer an annual photography festival, PhotoNOLA. It is a great organization to belong to, run by a passionate group of artists.

I attended PhotoNola a couple of years back and am returning for the Benefit Party and Print Auction, having donated Burn No 45 to the event. Many people are involved to create this fabulous weekend which includes portfolio reviews, workshops, lectures, and alternative process demonstrations, a true labor of love. Its location can't be beat and any excuse to return to New Orleans is good enough for me! I will be basking in the music, the food and the art...and oh, did I mention Prospect 2?

Dan Cameron Introduces Prospect New Orleans from Newgray on Vimeo.

Francesca Woodman on Self Portraiture

2011-12-07T07:43:00.000-08:00

I am taking a short digression from featuring some Chicago artists because there was very interesting article in the New York Times art section on Sunday on Francesca Woodman which featured her parents, both artists in their own right, and how they have gone about working with her archives. I had started a blog post on her last April but it somehow got squirreled away.

Woodman worked from a place of unconsciousness and total surrender. Her life was cut short at the tender age of 22 and some of her images fore shadow her untimely death...raw and riveting.

video posted on You Tube by Arteensilencio

The Morning News

2011-12-05T06:37:00.000-08:00

check it out...The Morning News

Maggie Meiners ~ Exposed Under Cover

2011-12-04T04:48:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder what it would be like to do a series of self portraits? Take a look at what Maggie Meiners has done in her series I Am Who You Want Me to Be. The photographs are so well seen, direct and incredibly compelling.

In her words...

"This is an on-going series of self-portraits that began with an examination of the many roles I play, both assigned and elective. The works detach from the traditional notion of portrait in two ways. The square format allows each work to occupy a space separate from landscape or portrait, just as one’s own experience; environment and appearance map our identity. In addition, the exclusion of the face removes individual identity suggesting that while I possess unique particulars, the role of the any individual is multi-tiered and complex.

Every individual has aspects of their life that they would prefer to deny or disguise. Here, each vignette is unapologetically filled with the accoutrements of my day-to-day life. Cindy Sherman and her commentary on the representations of women in society have certainly influenced me. Yet these works remain personal observations commenting on my own experience, while nodding toward the multiplicities that comprise the totality of every contemporary woman.

My previous work has, even at its most abstract, dealt with specific places, experiences and forms. I am largely self-taught, and as my practice developed, I believe that I had to gain a better understanding of my self. I am an individual, and I am also a wife, mother, consumer, athlete, daughter, sister, and cook, to name a few. Yet, as an artist in an unexpected socio-economic construct I am often a novelty. Looking clearly and unapologetically at these various roles has afforded me a larger view of the human condition; and an awareness of the self we expose and the self we keep private."

Here are a few images to prime us for the upcoming holidays!

You can see Maggie's work up close and personal at the Zia Gallery in Winnetka, IL

Art Fox ~ Walls @ Chicago Cultural Center

2011-12-01T06:45:00.000-08:00

In the next several works I am planning on presenting some work of a very talented group of Chicago photographers. I hope you enjoy it! Art Fox currently has work up at the Chicago Cultural Center in his first solo show. He helps us to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.

In Art's Words...

"How, Why, When, and Where: Walls"

"After food and clothing is shelter. Shelter means walls. Even our great cities are made of walls. The lucky dwellers have four and a roof; the unfortunate borrow one as haven from wind, rain, and man. But think China. Think Berlin. Walls keep you out and they keep you in. And ever since the petroglyphs they are blackboard, mural, signboard, journal. Cold and flat but the very mark of mankind. Walls tell us about people."

"I have always been a collector of the common unappreciated objects of art which fill our world. Ever since childhood I have squirreled away curious rocks, fossils, seeds, odd pieces of wood, or manmade objects, for their colors and contours. Walls are a fusion of the natural and the manmade, and like these smaller things, also present fascinating abstract patterns and textures. Street artists may have used them as a canvas worthy of preservation. Walls are too big to bring home, but they are patient and will wait for me, until the light is right or the car moves on. They are forgiving of depth of field and shutter speed. They are also a convenient stage-set, upon which we can view the people around us. I see myself as a collector of light patterns reflected off the walls of our world."

Here is a review from photo critic, Michael Weinstein from the New City Art

"Shooting in lush, muted color, Art Fox continues the modernist tradition of wall photography pioneered by Aaron Siskind, and redeems the ruins, as Siskind put it, by capturing the enthralling blend of textures, splashes of paint, pock marks and blistering lettering and rust that bedeck weathered surfaces that can exert a hypnotic effect. Fox’s images range from straight representational shots to nearly pure abstractions, the latter of which are the most successful by virtue of our ability to concentrate on composition and color to the exclusion of everything extraneous. Fox reaches the perfection that Siskind sought of besting abstract expressionist paintings in “Wire and Wall,” in which the involving cracked and striated gray concrete surface is broken by a vertical swathe of red, orange and yellow paint within which a rigid black vertical line (the wire) sections off the composition."

Through December 21 at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 East Washington

Pushing the Boundaries of Photography ~ Greg Halvorsen Schreck on The Art of Fixing a Shadow

2011-11-27T11:36:00.000-08:00

If you are interested in what is new in photography, be sure to check out the work of Greg Halvorsen Schreck. His work is nothing short of amazing. It is just a matter of time before this goes mainstream. Greg is a Chicago treasure.

in Greg's words....

"Lambertian photographs are digital photographs made out of wood. There is no pigment, ink, or emulsion that define them, nor are they projected images. Rather, the photographs are formed by light and shadow as it rakes across the surface contours. The science of the images is based on Lambert’s Law, from 1760. The equation calculates the diffuse reflection intensity of a surface based upon the angle of illumination and the angle of observation. Programmers have used Lambert’s Law to render objects realistically in 3-d computer programs. Mark Woodworth, a friend, an industrial physicist, coded Lambert’s equation into a software program that translates grayscale pixel densities into angular surface changes that can be milled on to a wood surface. Each photograph combines around 96 separately machined pieces of wood viewed from the side. In normal room light, the images can barely be perceived. They look like a peculiar chunk of wood; maybe something is carved into the surface. Illuminated properly with a single light source, the wood magically transforms into a black and white photograph."

"The poetry of each portrait comes from their concave quality. The photograph is hollowed out of the wood, a subtractive process. So the sitter leaves a space behind, an absence. That absence is reminiscent of the shadow that symbolizes the origins of art, when the Corinthian maid traced the shadow of her beloved the night before he left for war, so she could remember him. As a result of this myth, both art and photography have been described as “fixing a shadow.” John Berger speculates something similar as he reflects on one of his drawings, “What is a likeness? When a person dies, they leave behind, for those who knew them, an emptiness, a space: the space has contours and is different for each person mourned. This space with its contours is the person’s likeness and is what the artist searches for when making a living portrait. A likeness is something left behind invisibly.”

Greg teaches photography at Wheaton College and has his work up at the Schneider Gallery in Chicago until December 31st. His work is extraordinary and must be seen in real life to fully appreciate it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-23T08:17:00.000-08:00

gratitude |ˈgratəˌt(y)oōd|
noun
the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness

Scenes from the Front

2011-11-19T05:49:00.000-08:00

The smells coming from my home studio are truly bittersweet. The beeswax from the new work is oh so lovely but the camera and case reek of smoke. It will all dissipate in time.

The burning season is over...her are a few images from yesterdays shoot.

When I parked my car near the storage shed, I thought I was having a vision as the corner of my eye spotted this madonna and child. It was so erie as I have many of those images in my new work from Mexico. I really thought I was hallucinating and then one of the ecologist said that she was left in the wood shed and they decided to leave her there to protect them and their work.

The cattails always put on an amazing, breathtaking show.

What remains has become more and more compelling...you can see why. New body of work???????

Return from Ragdale

2011-11-17T14:33:00.001-08:00

I am back from another amazing two weeks at Ragdale. It has expanded my work in ways that I did not imagine but in looking back I think...of course! It makes perfect sense!

Before I went, Susan Burnstine, an amazing photographer who captures dreams scapes like no other, asked me if I would be interested in being interviewed for her blog titled, Underexposed. I said that would be fine but it would need to wait until after I got back from my residency.

I happily received the interview questions while I was in the midst of the two weeks. I say happily because when I wrote my first draft, the words just flowed out, a direct consequence of being in a highly creative mode. However, when I read it over, I was shocked at how clumsy the writing was. I edited it many times over.

There were 8 amazing residents at Ragdale while I was there, 4 visual artists and 4 writers. At dinner one night I mentioned how many times I had to edit and re-edit the interview. The writers said, " Yes, that is how it is!" I chuckled to myself because I thought if you were a writer, it was supposed to be easy! I guess there are no short cuts to really good art!

my studio at Ragdale

Anyway, I thought I would share the interview with you that is posted on her blog, which can be found along with many more images HERE. The images I have posted in this blog are newly created from the residency where I explored encaustics.

"Jane Fulton Alt’s The Burn was one of the bodies of work I viewed in Photolucida’s Critical Mass that resonated on a profound level for me. After viewing the work, I contacted Jane who graciously agreed to an interview.

SUSAN BURNSTINE: What were your beginnings as a photographer and when did you realize it would become your chosen form of expression?

JANE FULTON ALT: I started photography after my youngest child began first grade, having dabbled in the arts much of my life. Prior to taking classes at a local art center, I was a proficient quilter but frustrated by the limitation of the materials. I was fortunate to have had a really gifted photography teacher whose vision and curiosity allowed me to consider the potential for poetry with the medium.

SUSAN BURNSTINE: Congratulations on all of your recent successes most recently with your exceptional series, The Burn. Can you discuss the personal impetus behind this body of work?

JANE FULTON ALT: The work found me, as have most of my projects. In 2007 I was awarded the first of several artist residencies at Ragdale which is located in the former Howard Van Doren Shaw’s estate overlooking a beautiful prairie in Lake Forest, Illinois. There is something very magical and compelling about the setting. During my first residency restoration ecologists from a local organization, the Lake Forest Open Lands, were conducting a small burn on the property. Being in a mind state of openness and wonder, I watched the fires and took a few photographs. I inquired about the possibility of following them the following season. In mid April I picked up the phone realizing that I could have very well missed it, as I forgot to call earlier. Well, as fate would have it, they were going out that very morning for the first time that season. It was a monumental day in my mind because my sister was simultaneously undergoing her first chemotherapy treatment after having been recently diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

Photographing the burn that day was a very emotional experience. As I looked thru the view finder I kept thinking about what was occuring in my sister’s body and the parallels were stunning. I could imagine the burn that was happening in her body at the very moment the prairie was burning to make way for the new spring growth. The insight of that first day has influenced how I have photographed, edited and printed the work. It has been a very hopeful and inspiring project and an anchor for me during these past four years. Through this project I have tried to look deeply into the essence of life cycles. If we listen closely, nature has so much to teach us.

SUSAN BURNSTINE: How did you gain access and how did you know about the controlled burns you photographed?

JANE FULTON ALT: After the first spring shoot I developed a trusting and respectful working relationship with the restoration ecologists. I am now familiar with the particular weather conditions that must exist to carry out a controlled burn and am contacted by the team during these times to photograph.

SUSAN BURNSTINE: Can you tell me a bit about the areas where these images photographed? Are they personal properties or publicly owned?

JANE FULTON ALT: All of the properties are part of a land trust located in Lake Forest, Illinois and run by the Lake Forest Open Lands Association whose mission is to conserve the natural environment through land acquisition, habitat restoration, environmental education and conservation advocacy. They have acquired over 800 acres of local native landscapes, including prairies, savannas, woodlands and wetlands.

SUSAN BURNSTINE: You have been photographing this series for four years. Is the series ongoing or complete? If ongoing, do you foresee any new directions for this project?

JANE FULTON ALT: Interesting question. I am in the midst of another artist residency and my goal was to think more deeply about the work. My ideas have been in a state of fluidity, which has been really exciting. I have always felt that the images were fine as photographs but that the series was not fully realized. I love the depth and mystery of the images but wanted more surface to the work. After much grappling with aesthetics and technical issues, I am very pleased to have returned to working with encaustics, which I utilized in two other bodies of work, Mourning Light and Chiapas.

I have also been fascinated by the ash remains and have spent many hours thinking about how to incorporate the found ash and seeds into the new work. Happily, the creative muses paid me a visit and both elements will be incorporated into each piece. I have been working on several small pieces to identify and master the technical challenges. Once I have a handle of the full range of issues that need to be worked out, I plan on creating larger pieces.

The best part of being on an artist residency is the time and space to daydream about one’s work. It is an incredible gift to be able to focus without interruption and has been an amazingly productive time for me. I have also thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated the camaraderie and critiques from the other residents.

SUSAN BURNSTINE: Is there one image in this body of work that speaks to you more so than others? If so, can you discuss why?

JANE FULTON ALT: My favorites keep changing, especially now that I am working with beeswax. I am attracted to images with warm tonalities, quiet compositions and an air of mystery. I am thinking more about the abstracted images and will be culling thru all my files to reconsider or “audition” new images.

SUSAN BURNSTINE: Are there plans for The Burn series to become a book?

JANE FULTON ALT: I would love to make a book of The Burn. I am hoping / waiting for the right time and publisher. Creating a book is a tremendous amount of work and everything needs to line up to start the process. When the work was shown in New York for the Photo District News Curators Choice, I was speaking with one of the judges. His insights and ability to articulate his thoughts about the photographs were thrilling. He did offer to write an essay about the work. Now I just need a publisher. When the work does get published, I plan to dedicate the book to my sister.

SUSAN BURNSTINE: When looking at your career as a whole. You have created varied, but truly fascinating and poignant bodies of work. Is there one element amongst the subject matter or perhaps within your psyche that connects all of these series?

JANE FULTON ALT: I would say that my training and practice as a clinical social worker, my extensive travels and raising my family have greatly influenced my thinking and seeking to understand what is universal to all people. My inquiring mind sought to understand humanity and the meaning of our existence. I have used the camera to explore issues around birth, death, and everything in between. The human condition is what interests me most.

SUSAN BURNSTINE: What are you working on now?

JANE FULTON ALT: I am continuing my work with The Burn but in using the new materials, it feels like a different body of work. The use of encaustics, my interest in ash and the infinite qualities of the subject matter will keep me occupied for many lifetimes!

I am also working on a project from this past summer’s Frontera Grill/Topolobampo staff trip to Mexico. I have been traveling with the award winning Chef, Rick Bayless and 35 members of his staff for 15 years now, creating new work for the entryway to the restaurant. I am collaborating with a writer whose book influenced the current butterfly installation that is in the entryway of the restaurant. I just finished transferring images onto a gold leaf surface, which will then be mounted onto copper…a loose reference to retablos. But that is another story!

SUSAN BURNSTINE: Do you have any upcoming exhibitions?

JANE FULTON ALT: Burn No 49 is currently on exhibit at the Corden Potts Gallery in San Francisco. Images from my Crude Awakening portfolio are currently in a satellite show at the Hereford Photography Festival in England and will also be in a group show at Wall Space Gallery in Canada this spring.

I will be included in the Critical Mass traveling group show and will have a solo show at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center in my home town next fall. Finally, I always have work up at the Frontera Grill and Xoco restaurants in Chicago.

taking a break

2011-11-04T09:58:00.000-07:00

...on an artist residency so will be concentrating on generating new work. will post again mid-november. xxoo

Critical Mass 2011

2011-11-02T03:36:00.000-07:00

I am so pleased to announce that I made the final list of the top 50 in the Critical Mass competition. This is the 3rd time, and the second year for the Burn series. It was thru my Critical Mass 2009 participation that the Corden Potts Gallery picked me up for representation. It just so happens that Corden Potts is opening a new show this Thursday featuring selected gallery artists and the work of Sharon Beals.

If you haven't seen Sharon Beals work, it is amazing. I am a sucker for life's beginning moments and her work zeros in on it.

From the Gallery show announcement, Sharon is quoted...

"Bird nests, even without knowing which birds constructed them, seem hardly possible," Sharon says. "Creations of spider's web, caterpillar cocoon, plant down, mud, found modern objects, human and animal hair, mosses, lichen, feathers and down, sticks and twigs--all are woven with beak and claw into a bird's best effort to protect their next generation."

Sharon goes on to say, "But survival for so many birds is tenuous in a modern world where habitat loss is as common as the next housing development, and even subtle changes in climate can affect food supply. It is my hope that capturing the detailed art form of the nests in these photographs will gain appreciation for their builders, and inspire their protection."

Sharon photographed nest and egg specimens, collected over the last two centuries, at The California Academy of Sciences, The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, and The Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology. While few nests are collected today, these nests and eggs are used for research, providing important information about their builder's habitats, DNA, diseases and other survival issues.

I will be showing my Burn No. 49 at the Corden Potts show.

A newer Burn image from the 2011 Critical Mass entry will be traveling in a group show in 2012, curated by Darius Himes, Assistant Director at Fraenkel Gallery to the following locations:
PhotoCenter NW, in Seattle, WA
Newspace Center for Photography, in Portland, OR
RayKo Photo Center, in San Francisco, CA

Other photographers included in the Top 50 are...
Evgenia Arbugaeva
Jessica Auer
Mary Ellen Bartley
Daniel Beltra
Nadine Boughton
Colette Campbell-Jones
Christopher Capozziello/AEVUM
Kirk Crippens
John Cyr
Katrina d'Autremont
Scott Dalton
Christopher Dawson
Nigel Gordon Dickinson
Mitch Dobrowner
Carolyn Drake
Jeremy Dyer
Mark Fernandes
Michelle Frankfurter
Misha Friedman
Lucia Ganieva
Meggan Gould
Gabriela Herman
Sarah Hobbs
Jeroen Hofman
Jennifer Hudson
Yaakov Israel
Heidi Kirkpatrick
Alejandra Laviada
Fritz Liedtke
Sebastian Liste
Gloriann Liu
Larry Louie
Mark Lyon
Michael Marten
Rizwan Mirza
Viviane Moos
Kenneth O Halloran
Susana Raab
Jesse Rieser
Alejandro Rivas
Kent Rogowski
Philipp Scholz Rittermann
Geoffrey H. Short
Youngsuk Suh
Daro Sulakauri
Stephen Vaughan
Toshiya Watanabe
David Welch
Sarah Wilson
Susan Worsham

Be sure to check out the Critical Mass website. Lots of interesting portfolios to browse thru.

The Visitor

2011-11-01T10:24:00.000-07:00

Last night I had an unexpected visitor. I was next door watching people's reaction to the worlds most elaborate Halloween display. A family of three strolled up the sidewalk to take in the scene. I had a feeling they may have been Mexican and inquired. They were indeed. I asked if they would be interested in seeing my Dia de los Muertos altar, which they were.

45 minutes later we were hugging each other goodbye. Her name was Yolanda and she was in the neighborhood with her family trick and treating. It turns out Yolanda was from Michoacan and grew up with all the rituals associated with Dia de los Muertos. She really liked the altar but proceeded to share other items I might consider adding. Slowly we refined the altar, adding a glass of water in case the spirits were thirsty, sea salt to keep the path clean, placing the candles in a bowl of water for keeping the vibrations high, and adding an apple and orange for nourishment. She spoke of the importance of having the 4 elements present on the altar...Fire, Water, Earth and Air. She also sprinkled the copal (incense) over the altar. It was truly an amazing experience and now I feel that the altar is finally complete and ready for welcoming of the spirits tonight, November 1st, the official start of Dia De los Muertos.

(note Yolanda's angel earring)

And Yvette, you asked if the altar would be up for the critique group next week. I am happy to say that Yolanda said it was important to keep it intact for 9 days...so yes, it will be up.

Yolanda's mother lived to 120 years old.

Dia de los Muertos Celebration

2011-10-31T09:37:00.000-07:00

12: 05 AM

It is two hours since the last guest left. We just had a fund raiser/salon for Ragdale . It felt like a performance art piece that touched all the senses. Art/food/ and friends gathering to celebrate and support the arts.

As I cut each marigold blossom from my yard in preparation for assembling the altar, I was thinking how extravagant it felt to have so many flowers adorning my home in addition to the 50 votive candles transported from Oaxaca. Flowers and candles are just the best along with the very colorful tissue cutout flags. My home was my pallet and when the sun went down and all the candles were lit, it felt like the entire house was floating on air!

The altar was dedicated to the Shaw family who founded The Ragdale Foundation which provides residencies for artists of all disciplines. I loved setting up my home to reflect the generous spirit of both the Shaw family and Dia de los Muertos, a life affirming remembrance of the departed thru celebration. The food was exquisite (as in transformative thanks to Howard and Kevin) and was followed by a fabulous talk by Chicago Chef Rick Bayless on the significance of food in memory, celebration and the creative process.

Every time I passed the altar I kept wanting to photograph it...just couldn't help myself!

The chocolate skulls were made by Nicole's Homemade Treats...and they were yummy! The mescal, Fidencio, was so smooth and from a distillery we visited this past summer in Santiago Matatlan, Oaxaca.

Happy Halloween and Day of the Dead!

The Thin Veil ~ Dia de los Muertos

2011-10-27T14:48:00.000-07:00

As we approach the end of October, I am reminded of the "thin veil" that many people think exists this time of the year between the living and the departed.

© Jane Fulton Alt

Much of my photographic life has been spent exploring death and dying, one of the greatest mysteries and the only certainty of our lives. I have photographed and volunteered in hospice programs, been witness to autopsies, slaughter houses, and cremation rituals in Varanasi, the holiest site in India. I also traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico to learn how Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is celebrated. It was staggeringly beautiful. It is a holiday where families gather at the grave site to celebrate and remember friends and family members who have died. The cemeteries are filled with flowers and the flickering light from hundreds and hundreds of candles. Most families also build altars in their homes to coax the spirits back for a visit. These altars include sugar skulls, marigolds, candles, copal (an incense) and the favorite foods and beverages of the departed.

I do think that we, as Americans, have much to learn from other cultures that have long standing rituals which pay homage to their ancestors.

© Jane Fulton Alt

“To be afraid of death is only another form of thinking that one is wise when one is not; it is to think that one knows what one does not know. No one knows with regard to death wheather it is not really the greatest blessing that can happen to man; but people dread it as though they were certain it is the greatest evil." -The Last Days of Socrates”
― Plato

Zenos Frudakis ~ Freedom Sculpture

2011-10-25T11:53:00.000-07:00

Frudakis' statement about his vision of the sculpture

"I wanted to create a sculpture almost anyone, regardless of their background, could look at and instantly recognize that it is about the idea of struggling to break free. This sculpture is about the struggle for achievement of freedom through the creative process.

Although for me, this feeling sprang from a particular personal situation, I was conscious that it was a universal desire with almost everyone; that need to escape from some situation – be it an internal struggle or an adversarial circumstance, and to be free from it....

In the end, this sculpture is a statement about the artist’s attempt to free himself from the constraints of mortality through a long lasting creative form."

Located at the GSK World Headquarters at 16th and Vine Streets, Philadelphia, PA
more of his work can be seen HERE.

Uta Barth

2011-10-24T09:41:00.001-07:00

I have been wanting to share the work of Uta Barth for sometime now, ever since I saw her exquisite exhibition at the Chicago Art Institute this past summer. It happened to coincide with my long swims in Lake Michigan where I would study the light patterns not only on the surface of the water but also on the sand under the shallow waters.

I was memorized by the quiet elegant images that Barth created from what I can gather, a place of deep meditation. In one room, you are surrounded by the bands of light that are reflected in hanging curtains, an ordinary sight that was transformed into the extraordinary. It reminded me of a exhibition I saw many years ago at the Met where I was in a room surrounded by Monet's Water Lilies.

I am so appreciative to share the following essays provided by Uta Barth that further illuminate her work.

Barth writes

"…to walk without destination and to see only to see.

I am interested in visual perception.

I am interested in getting you to engage in looking rather than losing your attention to thoughts about what you are looking at.

Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees is the title of Lawrence Weschler’s biography of Robert Irwin. Long before that, it was a line in a Zen text. Nothing could better describe what I aim for with each project I make, over and over, yet each time in a different way.

If the subject of the work is perception and not what the camera is pointed at, then there is no point in “going out to photograph.” Given that, ten years ago I made the “choice of no choice”: I would only photograph wherever I happened to be most of the time, the interior of my own home.

But you still have to point the lens someplace. So you let it follow your gaze, allow it to stare at the same thing for hours and months, or to simply trace light and time. To render light, time, silence, and negative space; to see the volume of a room instead of its walls and then to trace vision where the camera cannot follow and to look at what you see with one’s eyes closed, by tracing the play of afterimages the human eye plays out for us. All of this is what I have pursued.

Always about vision, being immersed in vision, always about “now.” This is what motivates the work and what motivates my day."

The color of light in Helsinki

Uta Barth 2004

‘What about perception?’

For years I have been talking about my work in terms of perception and countering other, more romantic, interpretations of it. Visual perception has been and continues to be the primary point of entry for thinking about the art I make, and for most of the things I do and I think about. Some time ago, while working on a text about my work, critic Timothy Martin asked me what I thought was a startling – and quite annoying – question: ‘What about perception?’ I had always completely taken for granted the answer to this question; so, although I can’t claim to explain all the aspects that interest me, I thought I’d make a sideways, sort of drifty stab at responding to some parts of that question here.1

Inside out

I remember:

The colour of light on the harbour in Helsinki.

The warm grey of the sky in Berlin.

Dense heat and humidity in the Yucatan. Standing there, in a field, being drenched with rain that was warmer than even my skin.

Driving into a cloud of white butterflies, so large, so dense that it obscured all vision of the road and the sky.

The glowing yellow light that streaks across my bedroom walls at 5:30 in the morning.

The sound of car tyres moving across an empty desert road on a hot summer night.

A cool night, bright moon, warm pool. Watching the steam rising.

The smell of the desert ground after a rainstorm.

Bare feet on warm sticky pavement. A Hollywood side street late one Saturday night.

Floating in a pool in the desert during a summer thunderstorm. Cool water falling on wet skin.

Looking into your eyes and the light reflecting in them. Looking past that light.

Something so far off in the distance, barely discernable, barely visible. Deep space.

Watching you walk away, walk into the dense rain. Watching your silhouette disappear into it.

The sudden feeling that someone is looking at you from behind.

Charcoal grey clouds moving towards me as I looked over your shoulder while we talked.

Squinting into piercing bright light. The look of the bleached and white landscape in Mexico.

Being on a fast train in Europe. A rainy landscape flying, streaking by in a flash of green.

The pale, slow fade of grey where the Glendale smog meets the sky.

Heat radiating, waving up from black asphalt, on a hot desert road. The smell of that.

A wall of water falling through the sky. Watching a storm in the distance.

The green glowing after-image of light caused by staring too hard and too long into a blinding, bright sky.

I remember each of these moments with a crystal clarity and completeness that even the present too often lacks. To this day I can see them, hear them; I can feel the humidity on my skin. Yet I remember little or nothing of the surrounding events.

Clearly these might be scenes that lend themselves neatly to romantic or melancholic interpretation – perhaps even nostalgia and longing? They would nicely set the tone for song lyrics that one might write (‘For you’), or be the opening lines of a novel; after all they would all start with ‘I remember’, and each scene is quite solitary in nature. All the right stuff: what desire is made of. Since I am cursed with the capacity for pining, I might find this way of seeing it a useful one.

But …

But, perhaps, there is another way to look at this list (a list that could potentially continue ad infinitum.)

I assume all of us have such a list; but this one is mine.

Perhaps it exists because these are fragments of time when I was ripped from the flow of narrative into a single moment. A moment when sound and vision were inverted themselves, torn inside out and filled my attention to capacity. A moment when everything else dropped away and the experience of seeing, of sensing, became so overwhelming, so all-encompassing, that the very idea of interpretation did not, could not, exist.

This is an interesting space of mind: when we lose all assumed meaning; lose the inevitability of narrative; lose the impulse for interpretation. A space of mind that is dislodged from making meaning and yet sees beyond the 180 degrees before us.

This space of mind produces a strange kind of vision, where positive and negative space hold equal weight. Where you can see the air and hear the interval between the sounds of passing cars on a dark desert road late at night. Where rain is not a sign of longing but something that fills and articulates what was previously negative space. Where light and dark are not about mood, but blind and flood your field of vision.

and, “What are you doing?”

Late one night, while writing his essay on Untitled, 1998, for this book, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe called to ask me: ‘What is it you are doing before or when you are making these photographs?’ The answer to this question is: I am doing absolutely nothing. I am not even lost in thought, but sort of lost in looking. I am quite literally doing what we call ‘absentmindedly staring into space’. That is how I spend much of my time; it is incredibly unproductive and it wreaks havoc on my ever-looming work ethic. It is also a state of mind not given to the impulse of making photographs. To me, nothing about being suspended and engaged in the visual, auditory or sensory observation of the moment lends itself to the desire to freeze or save it. I don’t have this type of relationship to making photographs, one of wanting to capture or replicate fleeting events. That would seem irrelevant and quite futile. The activity of making a photograph, to me, is one of disruption. The desire is not to capture or reproduce the moment, but perhaps, or hopefully, to create the potential for generating a new and quite different moment. Somehow the difference between these two desires seems an important distinction to me.

Again and again

Duration, endless repetition, sameness and redundancy, all for their own sake, are of interest here. Close attention which is not motivated by a developing story line. The scene does not change, but the raw impression of sight does with the blink of the eye. What happens when you stare into the light too long? The image burns onto your retina while its opposite drifts inside your eye and your mind. This ‘drifting opposite’ becomes the only event. An event worth watching, as it moves on its own and then recuperates and reconstitutes in the very next glimpse. It is not a narrative progression but a continual looping back to what is – almost – the original scene.

Scientists tell us that if you paralyze the eye and prevent it from moving continuously, scanning the scene much like a small motion detector, vision dissolves into a field of white light. They say that the eye and the brain only register difference and change. What is known and familiar is quite literally invisible. They also say that it is impossible to locate the point of distinction where the cells of the optic nerve turn into the cells of the brain.

Something about rain

‘Is the work about being inside on a wet day?’, Jeremy asks in his essay for this book.

In some ways, what could be better? And: what else could it be?
I’ve loved rainy weather all my life. Perhaps it is because I grew up with it in Berlin, a city wet and grey more often than not. But, more importantly, because watching the rain begin to fall on a scene outside a window slowly inverts all of the space before my eyes. Small drops, then streaks and lines begin to articulate what started out as the invisible volume of air: the negative space in the scene. My attention moves and my eyes begin to focus on a plane that was previously unoccupied, a plane in space that only seconds ago had no mark to guide the eye. In a short time, that which was empty fills with thick dense lines as it obscures what was previously the view. Wet blobs fill the volume to which everything else now becomes the backdrop. The glass of the window becomes a flat plane on which a screen of drops run and pour with increasing insistence and density, separating the two quite different events. All spatial understanding is reoriented. The ambient sound of raindrops falling is not directional but comes from all around. Their insistent sound repeatedly draws our attention to the present moment. This, it seems to me, is a pretty interesting thing to watch and listen to, from ‘ … the inside, on a wet day’.

Martin, Timothy, What about perception, working title for a forthcoming collection of essays, some previously published in Uta Barth: In Between Places, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, 2000.

Catching up

2011-10-21T11:37:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I have posted. My apologies to those who check regularly. It is has been a busy and awesome fall. I attended my niece's wedding and it was nothing short of a miracle. All the major players were in attendance, including my parents of 91 and 92 years old. It felt epic and I am reeling from the afterglow.

A few days prior to the wedding I taught a workshop for Filter Photo and totally enjoyed that. I am finding mentoring very fulfilling and am considering opening another critique group this coming winter. I will also continue supporting and encouraging the creative process thru this blog.

Are you familiar with the lyric from the play RENT... "THE OPPOSITE OF WAR ISN'T PEACE, IT'S CREATION." How cool is that? Now get to work creating!

This is an excerpt from Wislawa Szymborska’s Nobel Lecture December 7, 1996....

"I've mentioned inspiration. Contemporary poets answer evasively when asked what it is, and if it actually exists. It's not that they've never known the blessing of this inner impulse. It's just not easy to explain something to someone else that you don't understand yourself. When I'm asked about this on occasion, I hedge the question too. But my answer is this: inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists generally. There is, has been, and will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners - and I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know." ….. This is why I value that little phrase "I don't know" so highly. It's small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include the spaces within us as well as those outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended."

and if that were not enough...

“What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what gets you out of bed in the mornings, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you. Fall in love, stay in love and it will decide everything.”
Pedro Arrupe

Our Situation on Earth ~ by Albert Einstein

2011-10-11T05:06:00.000-07:00

Our Situation on Earth
--by Albert Einstein

"Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here involuntarily and uninvited for a short stay, without knowing the whys and the wherefore. In our daily lives we only feel that man is here for the sake of' others, for those whom we love and for many other beings whose fate is connected with our own. I am often worried at the thought that my life is based to such a large extent on the work of my fellow human beings and I am aware of my great indebtedness to them. I do not believe in freedom of the will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of freedom of will preserves me from taking too seriously myself and my fellow men as acting and deciding individuals and from losing my temper. [...]

Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated. The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavors in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is."

--Albert Einstein

Remembering Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T04:54:00.000-07:00

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

signage from Apple Store in Oaxaca, Mexico

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address at Stanford Univeristy delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

"I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much."

Few people come around with such a clear vision. His convictions, love and creativity have changed how we operate in this world. He will be greatly missed.

Filter Photo Festival

2011-10-05T15:36:00.000-07:00

The festival begins in a week. Lots of programming to pick from. A big thanks to Sarah Hadley for spearheading this for the Chicago photo community.

David Maisel ~ History's Shadow

2011-10-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

I decided to repost this entry as there was a wonderful article about David's work in the New York Times yesterday titled The Heart of the Art. His work continues to amaze me it is depth, originality and metaphorical references. There is a slide show where you can view his work here.

Here is the post from November 2009...

David Maisel has once again pushed the boundaries of photography while exploring memory and excavation. While at a residency at the Getty Research Institute, he states that he began exploring "where the realms of art and scientific research overlap each other. While photographing the Getty Museum’s conservation departments, I became captivated by x-rays of art objects from the museum’s permanent collections. The ghostly images of these x-rays seem to surpass the power of the original objects of art. These spectral renderings seemed like transmissions from the distant past, conveying messages across time."

"History’s Shadow comprises my series of re-photographed x-rays of art objects from antiquity. I have culled these x-rays from museum archives, which utilize them for conservation purposes. Through the x-ray process, the artworks of origin become de-familiarized and de-contextualized, yet acutely alive and renewed."

"I view these x-rays as expressions of the artists and artisans who created the original objects, however many centuries ago; as vestiges and indicators of the societies that produced these works; and as communications from the past, expressing immutable qualities that somehow remain constant over time."

For those of you who are not familiar with David's work, it is well worth your time to visit his website. He has done some amazing work, including his Mining Project and his Library of Dust series

“. . . these canisters hold the cremated remains of patients from an American psychiatric hospital. Oddly reminiscent of bullet casings, the canisters are literal gravesites. Reacting with their ash inhabitants, the canisters are now blooming with secondary minerals, articulating new metallic landscapes.”

— Geoff Manaugh, Contemporary

Peace ~ ful

2011-10-01T12:18:00.000-07:00

You haven't heard from me lately because I just returned from a retreat at the Omega Institute in upstate NY where I once again met with the Brazilian healer John of God. I had seen him in Abadiania, Brazil last January for a most amazing experience (see former post HERE). This encounter was definitely different...no sacred waterfalls and no one to translate your individual questions among many other things. However, it was enriching in many other ways including being able to understand the guided meditations which, in Brazil, were all in Portuguese!
I was thrilled with the use of rainbow imagery in one guided meditation. My thoughts went immediately to my former post and to a much deeper understanding of chakras (which are referred to often in yoga practice).

©Mexico 2011 Jane Fulton Alt

By day three I found myself in a place of deep inner peace, contentment and serenity. It was so lovely to drink from the well once again.

I am in the throws of trying to incorporate the calm and peace I experienced last week into my everyday life. This has been aided by reading the New York Times bestseller, hamlet's Blackberry by William Powers. It was recommended to me in the comments section of an earlier post On Blogging by fellow photographer, Paul, whose blog, The Bertie Project, is well worth visiting. The book is a very thoughtful and balanced discussion on balancing online activities with the creative life. "The essential idea of the book is simple : to lead happy productive lives in a connected world as we need to master the art of disconnecting....Humans love to journey outward. The connective impulse is central to who we are. But it's the return trip, back to the self and the life around us, that gives our screen time value and meaning."

Quieting of the mind is essential to the creative life.

Pae White at the Art Institute of Chicago

2011-09-24T09:12:00.000-07:00

I feel like I should be working for the tourism board of the City of Chicago. There are so many cool goings on in the city.
Last night I attended an event at the new Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. I had never been to the restaurant, Terzo Piano, and the setting took my breath away. The terrace, with spectacular views of Millennium Park and Michigan Avenue, is encased with a site specific work by artist Pae White titled Restless Rainbow. She has wrapped the space with an abstracted rainbow. While planning for the installation, White wondered... what would happen if a rainbow fell from the sky?

You could go see for yourself.

While we are on the subject of rainbows, here is a stitched iphone photograph of a double rainbow.

© Alden Griffith

Who even knew they occurred in nature?

Chicago Theater ~ On Rothko and The Pitmen Painters

2011-09-23T07:53:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows how fabulous Chicago Theater is. There is always something wonderful to see. I am passing along 2 suggestions for anyone reading this blog who resides in Chicago. The Pitmen Painters at Time Line Theater is about a group of men who work in the coal mines who hire a teacher so they can learn about art. When the teacher learns they know absolutely nothing about the history of art, he suggests they pick up a paintbrush and start creating their own art. What follows is an insightful and delightful discussion about art.

I jotted down these quotes to share...

"Art isn't about finding answers...it's about asking questions."
"Art is not about technical proficiency, it is about feelings."

A nice article about the book that the play was based on, The Pitman Painters: The Ashington Group 1934-1984 by William Feaver is HERE.

Last night I saw Red at the Goodman Theater which is by American writer John Logan about artist Mark Rothko. I was deeply moved by the play as it touched so many of the themes in my life. Happily, I bought a copy of the play in the lobby to more fully consider it's riches. One thing Rothko asks his assistant was if he had every read Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy. (I haven't but just downloaded it onto my kindle).

He goes on to discuss his concern for building up the luminosity of the painting, (something I am currently struggling with and am at the point of being discouraged but not defeated). "I do a lot of layers, one after another, like a glaze, slowly building the image, like pentimento, letting the luminescence emerge, until it's done."

The Rothko character also states, "These pictures deserve compassion and they live or die in the eye of the sensitive viewer, they quicken only if the empathetic viewer will let them. That is what they cry out for. That is why they were created. That is what they deserve."

For more information on the NYC production, there is an online interview with Charlie Rose HERE.

Thursday Morning Musings

2011-09-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

"We shall not cease from our exploration
And at the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time." T. S. Eliot

I thought of this poem this morning as I was listening to the Grateful Dead. It was if I had never really heard the music before.
Amazing how we often gloss over things that we "think" are so familiar. I keep wondering how to keep my mind and heart open to the infinite world of possibilities.

This was a self portrait I did years ago in the darkroom by sandwiching negatives together....I look at it now and think "did I really do that?"

Gregory Crewdson

2011-09-21T15:19:00.001-07:00

I have been aware of Gregroy Crewdson's work for some time now but just recently read on twitter that he will be teaching at Yale University in their photography department. It peaked my interest in him so I decided share some of his work.

Crewdson is best known for elaborately staged scenes of American homes and neighborhoods and often has up to 40 crew members helping him to create that perfect shot. There is an interview I found on you tube where he describes his process, which I am including at the bottom of this post. I am also including a few quotes from the interview which I found inspiring.

"What is important is trying to make this one moment as beautiful and mysterious as possible."

"In a lot of my pictures there is a preoccupation with what is beneath the surface of something."

"There is a tension between the ordinary and the strange that really attracts me."

"I like the twilight, the magic hour, but I think my pictures are very much about the moment between moments, between before and between after."

Here is the interview. What is amazing to me is the effort involved in creating the photograph. It is staggering.

Marwencol

2011-09-19T07:46:00.001-07:00

If you ever wondered how art factors into mental health and healing, you have to check out this movie, Marwencol. It is the riveting story of how Mark Hogancamp overcame a vicious mugging that left him severely impaired with extensive brain damage. It is remarkable how the photographs he took of his work conveyed the deep emotion and drama of the scene. There is a fusion of what is real and what is imagined which gives the work an immediacy and extraordinary power. The filmmakers of this documentary were also masterful in how they told the story.

You can stream the movie thru Netflix. Also, Marwencol is the name of his imaginary town. You can learn more about the entire project HERE.

Happy Friday!

2011-09-16T08:37:00.001-07:00

The Dorchester Project ~ Theaster Gates

2011-09-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you have seen the movie the Interrupters, but if you did, it may have left you wondering what you could do. The arts have always been a vehicle for healing. I just read this article in the University of Chicago Magazine and instead of trying to paraphrase it, I thought I would just share it. The project is truly inspired and reminds me of how some artists have transformed Detroit neighborhoods.

Culture Wares
BY JEFF CARROLL | PRINT EDITION—SEPT–OCT/2011

Theaster Gates hopes to transform a neighborhood through art.

It's as if he wants to get this part out of the way first: Theaster Gates knows that the South Side of Chicago has long been burdened with a bad reputation—and that the reputation is at least partially merited. "We know there's violence, and we know there's gang activity," Gates says. "We know there's not a strong economic core."

What Gates most wants to talk about, however, is the potential that gets lost in the discussions of the problems. "What we don't consider enough is the rich cultural legacy," Gates says, "the kind of cultural curiosity, the alternative histories. ... There is a deep intellectual reservoir that has never been fully tapped. And if it has, its voice has never been amplified loudly enough."

© Lloyd Degrane

Gates, a University resident artist, visual-arts lecturer, and director of arts-program development, has dedicated himself to amplifying that voice.

His Dorchester Project is the most ambitious example of his goal to find run-down spaces in struggling black neighborhoods and transform them through art and culture. Although the South Side's Grand Crossing neighborhood serves as the locus of his movement, Gates's art has been the subject of exhibitions in other cities, including St. Louis and Seattle. He has purchased property in St. Louis with the idea of transforming blighted spaces there, as well.

Gates, a West Side native who has arts, religion, and urban planning degrees from Iowa State University, has accumulated an eclectic body of work from pottery to music—his Black Monks of Mississippi ensemble includes musician Leroy Bach, formerly of the alt-rock band Wilco. The ongoing project in Grand Crossing, however, promises to be his magnum opus.

The Dorchester Project's centerpiece is a once-abandoned two-story house at 6916 South Dorchester. To create what he hopes will become a South Side cultural hub, where artists and other visitors can congregate both informally and for planned events, Gates went on a bargain spending spree. He purchased the property for $16,000. Then he bought 8,000 vinyl albums from a Hyde Park record store, Dr. Wax, which was closing. He added to the mix approximately 14,000 used books and thousands of photographic slides that the University of Chicago was planning to discard. Every item serves a double purpose—arrayed throughout the home, each one becomes part of the overall decor while also providing cultural material for artists and other visitors, a conversation piece unto itself.

The house is the first of many spaces on the block that Gates, who has also purchased two vacated foreclosures nearby, plans to transform. For stigmatized neighborhoods, he says, art can be the springboard to renaissance. "There's dignity everywhere," Gates says. "It's easy to overlook because the people who write about culture in the city live north. The people who have the capacity to create new cultural opportunities usually create them in a place that seems economically viable, where you can bank on a certain kind of person going to a certain kind of thing."

For Gates, who joined the University in 2007, his job is an opportunity to bridge the gap between the campus arts culture and the surrounding neighborhoods. He intends to connect the two even more, developing a role with the University under the working title, "Director of Arts and Public Life."

"I'm having this conversation with my friends at the University of Chicago," says Gates. "How can our students become more cultured? How do we get our students more embedded in the cultural life of the city? How do we ensure that our students have a voice and are engaged in the community? ... How do we make sure the community has access to the cultural life of the University? ... Is there a way I can help contribute to that?"
With his Dorchester Project, Gates is leading the discussion.

The link to the article is HERE.

Waste Landscape ~ Elise Morin and Clemence Eliard

2011-09-13T11:30:00.000-07:00

WASTE LANDSCAPE - Centquatre 104 - 21-07 // 11-09-2011 from elise morin on Vimeo.

A project by Elise Morin and Clémence Eliard

"WasteLandscape" is a 500 square meters artificial undulating landscape covered by an armor of 65 000 unsold or collected CDs, which have been sorted and hand-sewn. It is well known that CDs are condemned to gradually disappear from our daily life, and to later participate in the construction of immense open-air, floating or buried toxic waste reception centers.Made of petroleum, this reflecting slick of CDs forms a still sea of metallic dunes: the art work's monumental scale reveals the precious aspect of a small daily object. The project joins a global, innovative and committed approach, from its means of production until the end of its "life"."WasteLandscape" will be displayed in locations coherent with the stakes of the project: art role in society, raising consciousness to environmental problems through culture, alternative mode of production and valuation of district associative work and professional rehabilitation. Over the course of multiple exhibitions, "WasteLandscape" will go through quite a few transformations before being entirely recycled into polycarbonate. The roaming will allow both artists to pursue new awareness-raising activities.

"The installation has been developped by Elise Morin and Clémence Eliard in collaboration with the 104"
"The building has been refurbished by atelier Novembre: Marc Iseppi & Jacques pajot"

In Memory of 9/11 ~ Quelling the Violence

2011-09-11T05:31:00.000-07:00

It was unintentional but on the eve of the 10th anniversary of 9/11 I went to see the movie The Interrupters. I had been trying to seeing it for some time but it took a while to open in Chicago and then I was out of town for all the sold out record breaking performances at the Gene Siskel Film Center. I was pleased to see they had another short run in a theater near me. I have been tracking this movie for some time because I had at one time considered working on a photographic project on gun violence. At the time of doing the research, I learned of this film in the making. I was so pleased that the extraordinary filmmakers, Kartemquin, of Hoop Dreams, were tackling the issue. The film focuses on universal themes of hope, compassion and love while following people in a south side Chicago neighborhood as they interrupt the cycle of violence. The model of intervention that the program Cease Fire uses could be applied world wide. The film has won multiple awards and should not be missed. Please, please, please go see it. You won't be disappointed.

Another person tackling the subject of epidemic gun violence is photographer extraordinaire, Carlos Javier Ortiz. He is giving a lecture about his work at the Filter Photo Festival in Chicago on Wednesday, October 12th at 7pm. Make your reservation HERE.

© Carlos Javier Ortiz

© Carlos Javier Ortiz

On Blogging

2011-09-09T05:54:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about my blog as of late, and have decided to post only "when the spirit moves me". I am thus abandoning my photo of the day project which I enjoyed for the first several months but has recently felt more burdensome. I continue to think of this blog as a place where I can share information that will inspire and support the creative life (with some self promotion on the side).

I have been reflecting on the state of photography in relationship to the internet and to my life. It has been amazing to me how much networking is done thru the internet and how much time we all spend trying to "connect" and be seen. Having been away from it for several weeks was truly refreshing. I wish I could say I have a definite answer for how to navigate all the social networking and informational sites but I don't and am stuggling to find the fine balance myself.

What I do know is that being in the state of creating is where it is at. The is what I value most.

On another note, there are several things happening in the Chicago area you should know about. The first is that this weekend is the fall opening of many exhibitions. It is a great time to see art and be inspired. There will be free trolleys running tonight in Chicago to get people to the various gallery districts. Should be a fun time. For more information, click HERE.

Tomorrow night is the opening for Christopher Schneberger and Anthony Iacussi at the Perspective Gallery in Evanston. Another great venue of a cooperative artist run gallery. Click HERE for more information.

The Filter Photo Festival is fast approaching and is offering a wealth of information and networking opportunities for photographers. Again, I will be teaching a workshop on Developing your Personal Vision on Wednesday, October 12th. Be sure to check out the wonderful lectures portfolio reviewers who are coming into our windy city.

And finally, if you love to read and have some extra cash and would like to support the place where so many wonderful books are written, the Ragdale Foundation is having their annual Novel Affair fundraiser at the end of the month. You can read more about it HERE. The 2 night affair includes having a dinner with a best-selling and award-winning authors including Lisa Genova (Still Alice), Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), Helen Simonson (Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand), Meg Wolitzer (The Position), Suzzy Roche (singer and new author), Heidi Durrow (The Girl Who Fell from the Sky), Sue Miller (The Good Mother), and Malachy McCourt (author and actor).

Checking In

2011-09-06T06:11:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to an email from Yvette stating how she was looking forward to my updated posts. I must say that I have been thinking about this blog and how much I enjoyed taking a break from writing. However, with her nudge, I decided to share a photograph I took that really pleased me from my time in Northern Wisconsin. I was considering how we, as photographers, tend to be drawn to the same image over and over again. After I took this photograph with my iphone, I was immediately reminded of an earlier image from the 1990's.

I poked around in my storage boxes and found the "matching" image. This earlier one was a "constructed" image which I set up (as opposed to the one I took this summer). I had such a difficult time in the darkroom dodging the sheet so I just made another print and tried the cut and paste method! Needless to say, this is the very first time this print has seen the light of day.

And then there is the quintessential boat. I have photographed this boat every summer and find it endlessly fascinating in its character and poetic possibilities.

In thinking about the change of seasons, our comings and goings, I thought I would share an amazing poem by Mark Strand...

From Dark Harbor

"It is true, as someone has said, that in
a world without heaven all is farewell.
Whether you wave your hand or not,

It is farewell, and if no tears come to your eyes
It is still farewell, and if you pretend not to notice,
Hating what passes, it is still farewell.

Farewell no matter what. And the palms as they lean
Over the green, bright lagoon, and the pelicans
Diving, and the glistening bodies of bathers resting,

Are stages in an ultimate stillness, and the movement
Of sand, and of wind, and the secret moves of the body
Are part of the same, a simplicity that turns being

Into an occasion for mourning, or into an occasion
Worth celebrating, for what else does one do,
Feeling the weight of the pelicans' wings,

The density of the palms' shadows, the cells that darken
The backs of bathers? These are beyond the distortions
Of chance, beyond the evasions of music. The end

Is enacted again and again. And we feel it
In the temptations of sleep, in the moon's ripening,
In the wine as it waits in the glass."

--Mark Strand

Square@Birmingham Exhibition

2011-09-01T06:03:00.000-07:00

An exhibition of square goodness will take place at fotofilia gallery, Regent Parade, Birmingham B1 3NS, UK, from 6th Sept to 1st Oct. Private view on the 6th Sept, 7 till 9 featuring works from: Mark Voce, Elodie Fougere, Patricia van de Camp, Alain Greloud, Jane Fulton Alt, Sylvestre Anasse, Olivier Despicht, Benjamin Juhel et Phil Bebbington.

It promises to be a very interesting exhibition. Wish I could be there!

off the grid

2011-08-13T13:37:00.001-07:00

Taking a break.
back after labor day REFRESHED!

Creative Mornings Video : Yancey Strickler

2011-08-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

2011/06 Yancey Strickler from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

Chicago's Filter Photo Festival 2011

2011-08-09T05:52:00.000-07:00

Chicago's very own Filter Photo Festival is the creation of photographer Sarah Hadley. It its third year, it promises to offer something for everyone. There are wonderful lectures, workshops (one of which I will be teaching titled Developing your Personal Vision), portfolio reviews and exhibitions. If you haven't considered attending a portfolio review before, this might be the time! There is a great line up of reviewers and it provides invaluable feedback on your work.

August 9 ~ Morning Light

There will also be a juried exhibition called "Beginnings." The jurors are
Barbara DeGenevieve, Photography Professor, School of the Art Institute and
Christy Karpinski, Editor of F-Stop Magazine.

Surely you have something you can submit!

ON REVERIE by Raphael Enthoven

2011-08-08T07:44:00.000-07:00

I am not sure if you saw the article On Reverie in the New York Times yesterday but it is too good not to share. I have posted an excerpt but you can read the full essay online HERE.

August 8

"Imagination, knowing and dreaming into the heart of the matter."

August 6, 2011, 12:46 PM
On Reverie
By RAPHAËL ENTHOVEN

"It’s a sweet drug that plays with fire. A wasteland — forest of ruins or paved-over jungle depending on whether wakefulness or sleep tips the scales. An old city where the shadows still hold a trace of vanished occupants, where detailed buildings, patiently reconquered by nature, suddenly still are there, sand castles. Through the dreamer’s kaleidoscope where the absence of desire is taken as reality, birds slash through the twilight, cypress trees dive into the pool, stars sparkle in the sea, clouds take on shapes, water lilies bloom in the sky, plans become flexible, the limit to how far things can go relaxes, thought dances, light is lit by shade, opposites are juxtaposed, merge and become linked in a prelude to beauty: reverie is contemplation’s prehistory, the education of the gaze by the eyes of the soul.

Suddenly, the world before concepts.

Daughter of consciousness and sleep, reverie blends their realms. Like intoxication, reverie is lucidity without an object, an activity but one that’s passive, a search that begins by giving up and lets itself be dazzled rather than looking...."

Color and Light

2011-08-07T06:18:00.000-07:00

August 4

August 5

Candy Chang's Before I Die Project in New Orleans

2011-08-06T04:58:00.000-07:00

Before I Die is the amazing brainchild of New Orleans artist Candy Chang. She is using blackboards that line the outside of an abandoned home in New Orleans to encourage people to think about their hopes and dreams. It is a symbol of rebirth and a testament to New Orlean's resilience and creativity.

In Chang's words...

"With support from old and new friends, I turned the side of an abandoned house in my neighborhood into a giant chalkboard to invite my neighbors to share what is important to them. Before I Die transforms neglected spaces into constructive ones where we can learn the hopes and aspirations of the people around us. This process (including obtaining official approval from many entities) has been a great lesson--more on that later. If you're in New Orleans, stop by the corner of Marigny and Burgundy (900 Marigny Street) to add your thoughts to the wall and discover what matters most to your neighbors. I believe the design of our public spaces can better reflect what's important to us as residents and as human beings. The responses and stories from passersby while we were installing it have already hit me hard in the heart."

The project has had such a positive response that Chang decided to continue the project online where you can add your dreams. Here are a few that have just been added....

Before I die I want to let people realize the value of equality.
-- AARON
Before I die I want to find true happiness. And channel that to the world..
-- TRICIA
Before I die I want to Save someone I love's live or die trying.
-- GUS
Before I die I want to feel accomplished.
-- SAMANTHA
Before I die I want to have a world tour with my parents.
-- DEWI MARISA
Before I die I want to forgive.
-- LACEY
Before I die I want to finally live on my own..
-- ANONYMOUS
Before I die I want to be a great mother.
-- STEPH
Before I die I want to see and eat everything in the world!.
-- DIANA
Before I die I want to truly be happy..

You can read more about it on her website HERE. What an inspirational project. I can't wait to visit the site on my next trip to New Orleans.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

2011-08-05T04:47:00.000-07:00

There is a Ralph Eugene Meatyard exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago which is not to be missed. I was first introduced to Meatyards work when I started out exploring photography. I have plenty of broken dolls and masks that I too have collected and photographed but they never had the power of Meatyard's work. I found the photographs haunting and disturbing, offering up some truths about the human condition.

I work in several different groups of pictures which act on and with each other – ranging from several abstracted manners to a form for the surreal. I have been called a preacher – but in reality, I’m more generally philosophical. I have never made an abstracted photograph without content. An educated background of Zen influences all of my photographs.
— Ralph Eugene Meatyard, 1961

from the wall text at Art Institute show...

At the Lexington Camera Club, where Meatyard first seriously studied photography, his mentor Van Deren Coke urged students to "start in your own backyard." Later Meatyard recalled the value of this advice. "This backyard business was carried into our own work. Van believed that we could make most of our pictures around our own homes. In making any photograph, Van suggested, it was enough to find the appropriate background, be honest, and put anything you wanted to in front of it. I have found that this is still the best way, with an excursion afield from time to time."

Extract from the preface, by James Rhem of the Photo Poche

"In short, Meatyard's work challenged most of the cultural and aesthetic conventions of his time and did not fit in with the dominant notions of the kind of art photography could and should be. His work sprang from the beauty of ideas rather than ideas of the beautiful. Wide reading in literature (especially poetry) and philosophy (especially Zen) stimulated his imagination. While others roamed the streets searching for America and truth, Meatyard haunted the world of inner experience, continually posing unsettling questions about our emotional realities through his pictures. Once again, however, he inhabited this world quite differently from other photographers exploring inner experience at the time. Meatyard's "mirror" (as John Szarkowski used the term) was not narcissistic. It looked back reflectively on the dreams and terrors of metaphysical questions, not private arguments of faith or doubt."

Last Night ~ Barack Obama's 50th Birthday Celebration in Chicago

2011-08-04T04:18:00.001-07:00

Everyone singing Happy Birthday to the President, led by Jennifer Hudson

In case you were wondering how Barack Obama's 50th Birthday Celebration went, here are a few photographs from the night. It was thrilling to be there. The music was fabulous, the energy electric. They had a slide show with lots of people holding up signs "I'm In" for the 2012 race. He did say that today is his actual birthday and that he'll wake up with an email from AARP telling him to “call President Obama and tell him to protect Medicare.”

No SLR cameras were allowed on the floor

Herbie Hancock was so amazing. I can't begin to tell you how hot it was standing there. And then the music started and everyone forgot how uncomfortable it was. We were just mesmerized by the artistry of the musicians.

My only regret is not video taping Jennifer Hudson singing. Her performance got to the essence of the soul.

President Obama went out to shake hands with his fans...I was just too far back but did shake hands with our new Chicago Mayor, Rahm Emanuel

August 4 ~ my favorite photograph of the night

"Im In" ...are you?

I woke up this morning to a wonderful email from Michelle Obama.

Jane --

Every day, I see Barack make choices he knows will affect every American family. That's no small task for anyone -- and more proof that he's earning every last one of those gray hairs.

This has been a busy week in Washington, but today happens to be Barack's 50th birthday. I'm writing to you because this year, the girls and I would like to do something a little different.

I'm asking friends and supporters of this campaign to wish him a happy birthday by signing his card, and sharing why you're on this journey with us.

Your names and notes will become part of a book that tells the story of this campaign -- who's building it, why we're in this thing, and what he means to us. We'll deliver a copy to Barack and send one to our campaign offices across the country. I've known Barack for more than 20 of his 50 years, and we've been through quite a lot together.

It still amazes me that no matter how many decisions and distractions he's faced with every day, he's always able to focus on the bigger picture. One way he does that is by making time for stories and letters from people like you -- because he knows that this job isn't about him, but about the millions of folks around the country he's fighting for.

This day -- and this campaign -- isn't just about Barack, either. So our team put together a video telling the story of another one of our supporters born 50 years ago today, talking about where he wants to see our country go and why he's in this fight with us. Watch it, and add your note to Barack's birthday card:

This next year will challenge us all to work harder than ever before, but the crucial thing is that you're here now, early on, helping to build this campaign.

I know that, like Barack and me, you have your own reasons why, so I hope you'll take a moment to sign the card and share your story with him and other supporters of this campaign.

Thanks for being a part of this,

Michelle

You can Sign The Card for President Obama HERE.

Happy Birthday President Obama

2011-08-03T05:25:00.000-07:00

August 3, 2011 ~ image by Mr. Brainwash

Today is President Obama's birthday. He is my hero and I am going to see him tonight along with Herbie Hancock, OK Go, and Jennifer Hudson at the Aragon Ballroom, just a stones throw from home. It was disappointing to wake up to the morning newspaper headlines saying he has suffered politically from the financial fiasco in Washington. Running this country with so many fundamentalists is no easy task. Change is not easy and compromise a challenge.

I watched the movie Invictus this past weekend and it was truly inspiring. After 27 years in jail, Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) is released in 1990. His immediate challenge is "balancing black aspirations with white fears", as racial tensions from the apartheid era have not completely disappeared. The title of the movie comes from a poem by William Ernest Henley, that was the spiritual cornerstone and support of Nelson Mandela's 27 year imprisonment.

"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul."

I couldn't help but see the parallels between what happened in South Africa and the divide that is deepening in this country.
Fear and misunderstand abound.

We must try to understand the other side, and at times compromise in an attempt to create wholeness.

The Underpass

2011-08-02T10:44:00.000-07:00

The 365 photos project continues to be a challenge. Some days I am really into it. Other days it feels like an imposition and/or a stretch.

The Underpass ~ August 2

I took this photograph after having been attracted to the space for many years. Because of the project, I made myself stop and shoot it with my iphone. Who knew I would be adding the text. I guess one just needs to be open to whatever arrives at your doorstep.

Resonate

2011-08-01T07:19:00.000-07:00

res·o·nate/ˈrezəˌnāt/Verb
1. Produce or be filled with a deep, full, reverberating sound.
2. Evoke or suggest images, memories, and emotions.

August 1

what do you resonate with?

just out of the lake after a most pleasurable morning swim. the word resonate kept coming to mind. i am in full tilt when i am swimming in open waters. it is a meditation as my mind skims over the landscape, supported by a gentle caress as the winged do their morning greet hovering over the velvet undulating surface of soft muted light.

The Most Perfect Day

2011-07-31T14:19:00.000-07:00

July 30

The Unexpected

2011-07-29T05:53:00.000-07:00

July 29

Imagine

2011-07-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

...you think about a morning swim in Lake Michigan but with over cast skys threatening to burst open any moment you hesitate. You decide to put your bathing suit on and bike to the lake, checking out the swimming conditions, unsure about making the commitment. It starts to drizzle, oh so lightly. You park your bike, glance at the smooth surface and ask a fellow sitting on the bench how the water was...he said "fabulous." That clinches it.

I swim for some time, in and out of raindrops, enjoying seeing them pinging the smooth surface of the water, wishing I had my camera with me. I then see several feathers floating on the silky surface of the water, again wishing I had my camera.

So that is it....the feather floating so gracefully on the blue grey waters.

The mood? not unlike Harry Callahan's photograph of Eleanor in Lake Michigan.

©Harry Callahan

One more thought that keeps resurfacing that I wanted to share...

Diana Nyad at age 61 will be swimming from Cuba to Florida. Her personal challenge is stunning. The NYT ran an article about her midlife challenge a few weeks ago HERE. 60 hours of non stop swimming covering 103 miles!

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Pier 24 in San Francisco

2011-07-27T09:44:00.001-07:00

Another highlight I had while in San Francisco was visiting Pier 24. It was highly recommended by Emily, who had spent some time working there last year. The space is owned by collector Andy Pilara and located at the foot of Bay Bridge. I had no idea what it was about, I only knew that one had to do a lot of advance planning as admission is free but limited to 20 people every 2 hours with appointments made a full month in advance. Talk about anticipation!

July 21

The goal of the space is "to provide an environment to experience and quietly contemplate photography." Mission accomplished. Descriptives from my experience there include...elegant, quiet, somber, contemplative, expansive, reflective and introspective.

Stepping into the gallery, I walked up to a huge photograph. I was caught off guard because there were NO identifying labels on the wall , neither the title or the author of the work. I found myself perplexed and confused, trying to identify, label or add any context to the work. This shifted into feeling slightly panicked. I went to the front desk to find out about the piece and was politely given a brochure with identifying information. It was created by Richard Misrach and titled 2.21.00; 4:38pm 2000 (from the series, Richard Misrach:Golden Gate).

However, I then quickly abandoned the brochure and settled into JUST LOOKING. I felt an incredible freedom to JUST BE with the work. I found myself engaged with the work in a new, fresh way.

The experience has led me to reconsider the use of text with my work.

The exhibiton, titled HERE, was really strong. It will be up until December 16th and I highly recommend it. It is about the San Francisco Bay area and features many heavy weight photographers. I especially enjoyed the pairing of Eadweard Maybridge and Mark Kletts panoramas, John Chiara's camera obscura images, and the works of Todd Hido,Larry Sultan, Jim Goldberg, and Henry Wessel.

Monday Morning Gift

2011-07-25T08:29:00.000-07:00

July 25

I am just starting to feel grounded again, after much traveling. I have much to assimilate and sort thru. I am happy today is Monday and just returned from my morning walk. Today I decided to take my iphone with me on the walk...just in case I couldn't resist taking a photograph. What was supposed to be a fast clipped walk became more of a stroll with lots of imaging making. I just couldn't resist.

Marigolds

2011-07-23T12:12:00.001-07:00

I just love marigolds...and I am not alone. In Mexico they are the primary flower in their Day of the Dead celebrations and in India they are often used for sacred rituals in their temples and along their rivers.

July 23

Today 64 marigold plants were lovingly placed in compost rich garden beds in anticipation of a Day of the Dead Salon and fund raiser we are hosting for Ragdale, one of my very favorite places that supports artists in their creative endeavors.

Not in Kansas Anymore

2011-07-22T06:50:00.000-07:00

...that was my reaction the minute I stepped onto the Google campus in Mountain View, California. Never been anywhere like it. It was a revelation. My first association was to a preschool Montessori classroom where there are highly engaging and appealing play stations with the sole purpose of fostering innovation and creativity.

July 19

After the 1 hour ride from San Francisco, I needed to use the restroom. The first surprise was the heated toilet seat (not that they really need them given we were in a temperate climate zone). Then there was a panel on the wall of the toilet stall that I had only heard of from someone traveling in Japan...the rest is self explanatory.

On the stall wall was a flyer announcing the Employee of the Month. The chosen employee had organized a program to aid the tsunami victims of Japan. One of the many things Google encourages and promotes is an openness to innovative, socially conscious programs.

I was unable to take any photographs once I was inside the building. In fact, I had to sign an agreement of non disclosure before I entered the building as they are very protective of what they do. However, I can share with you that I had the most amazing, gourmet meal. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are provided with the job, as are workout rooms, yoga classes and bowling alleys. Need a hair cut? laundry or ironing? oil change? No problem. One can take care of all the daily necessities on campus. There are even sleeping pods available for the weary.

While driving back to San Francisco I started reflecting on how the Google executives have created a work environment in which the creative juices can flow...the everyday mundane needs are taken care of, allowing for total focus and commitment to innovation. The food served was not only nourishing but made with the utmost love and care. It was evident they invest in their employees, unlike anything I have ever seen. I was reminded a bit of what it was like to attend the Ragdale artist residency in which you are supported in such a manner that allows you to focus solely on the creative process.

For a "work" place, it was truly revolutionary and brilliant.

New Eyes

2011-07-17T21:11:00.000-07:00

It feels like I have been traveling the speed of light during the past 2 weeks. Lots to process. I received some recommendations on what art shows not to miss in San Francisco from Elizabeth Corden of the Corden Potts Gallery . I had the pleasure of seeing a wonderful exhibit The Steins Collect at SFMOMA. Gertrude Stein and her 2 brothers, Leo and Michael, were among the first to recognize the talents of avant-garde painters like Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. The stunning collection from the Steins' holdings included dozens of works by Matisse, Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. It was breathtaking.

I then headed over to 826 Valencia to visit author Dave Eggers's (my hero) pirate supply store where I purchased new eyes. I giggled as I slipped the eyes into the Frida Kahlo bird box that contained the wedding cookies I consumed at the coffee shop at SFMOMA, a perfect container for my new eyes!

July 18

PDN Opening

2011-07-15T06:03:00.001-07:00

July 14
Photo District News Curators Choice opening. It was quite a scene. Wonderful to see friends from so many different parts of my life. A big thank you for your support...and to PDN and curators for pulling it all together. A truly memorable evening.

Sistering

2011-07-13T13:26:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to a meeting where I heard about renovations on a turn of the century house. During the presentation by the architects I heard the term "sistering." which refers to reinforcement (used for joists).

July 13 ~ Milagros in my Sister's House

I am at my sisters home now and she just received the 4th delivery of nourishing food from a pilot program called Pathways Cooks. It is a program that provides nutrient-rich, whole foods, organic meals to women undergoing chemotherapy and their families in Union, Essex and Morris counties in New Jersey.

This was the brainchild of Karen Feldman who attended a workshop given in California by the Ceres Community Project which states on their website...

"We are in the midst of one of the most profound transformations in human history. Amidst global economic crisis, rising violence among nations, and a deepening awareness of the breakdown of the planet’s ecosystems, a tidal wave of change is sweeping through communities everywhere.

The change is coming not from governments or political leaders, not from the United Nations, World Bank or International Monetary Fund. It’s coming from people like you and me who are looking around our towns, neighborhoods and villages and seeing not just problems but opportunities. Often there is nothing more than the spark of an idea and the willingness of one or two or ten people to dive in and begin."

"At the time, I was dividing my time between two of my passions – working part-time as a chef at a retreat center in the western hills of Sonoma County and teaching horseback riding and training dressage horses at a farm in Santa Rosa. After spending ten years running a home-delivered meal service, I was enjoying the simplicity of getting paid for my work and not having to take it home with me.

On a lovely June day in 2006, I was driving to the barn when my cell phone rang. Sue Curry, my riding instructor, wondered if I could give her daughter a job over the summer and perhaps teach her to cook at the same time. There was no easy solution. I wasn’t in a position to hire anyone – and who takes someone who can’t cook on a catering job? But Sue was persistent and I have always been more inclined to say yes than no when the universe comes calling.

One conversation led to another and a couple weeks later I suddenly thought about a friend whom I knew was involved in the local cancer support community. One call confirmed that, yes, there were definitely families who could use help with meals. Sue offered to pay for the food, I donated my time, and Megan and I began meeting one afternoon a week to prepare meals for two single people and a family of four – all of them dealing with cancer or other serious health issues.

As Megan and I cooked together, I talked about my love of working with food. She gained confidence chopping and dicing and moved on to blanching and sautéing. Every afternoon, we packaged the food we’d made, creating grocery bags of meals for our three families. One of the first times that we cooked, the husband of a woman with breast cancer stopped to pick up their food on his way home from work. I had never met him before and introduced myself and Megan. We told him about the food we had prepared. I witnessed Megan’s pride in the contribution she was making in their life and his deep gratitude for the simple gift of the meals. Something about that moment took hold in me.

Several weeks later, I woke early in the morning with a vision of a non-profit that would bring young people into the kitchen to learn to cook and eat healthy foods and then provide meals to individuals and families who were touched by serious illness. I wanted more people to benefit from what Megan and our three families were experiencing.

What prompted Sue to call me that day? When the idea entered my mind to call the friend who was involved in the cancer support community – where did that come from? And the vision of this as a non-profit, whose idea was that?

The Ceres Community Project’s story is filled with seemingly inexplicable moments, connections, ideas and conversations. An expert in Quickbooks shows up to volunteer just as we’ve filed our incorporation papers and need to create our own accounting system. Someone passes a brochure to a local reporter in a moment when we are expanding. She writes a full-page story and we benefit from a needed influx of volunteers. A professional chef just happens to wander into an event we are catering as a fundraiser, picks up our brochure and calls me – a month before we are adding our second cooking day and I’m scrambling for help.

Over the past three years I’ve deepened my understanding of the energy or spirit at work in the universe. When we are able to open ourselves to its magic, when we learn to be attentive to where it is leading us – not just to our own plans and ideas – amazing things can happen. Today, The Ceres Community Project is truly the co-creation of hundreds of people, each of whom said “yes” in a moment of awareness that they had something to contribute, that there was a role to play in something larger. That first morning when I “saw” what would become The Ceres Community Project, I remember being filled with excitement. The vision was very clear and I sensed an elegance to it – the way that it addressed so many needs in the community and so many things that I cared deeply about. Young people would learn to cook. People who needed healing food would have it. We would help teach people about the link between what we eat and our health. And we’d help to restore the idea of caring for our neighbors, something that had been lost between my parents’ generation and my own.

Despite what I thought I understood, I can look back now and tell you that I barely had a clue about what the universe had in mind when it planted the idea for Ceres. Today, the project continues to unfold in ways that surprise me – and I imagine that a year or two from now, we will still be discovering more about how the heart of The Ceres Community Project wants to express itself."

from New Moon magazine...

"After a few hours of intense work, when my eyes are watery from chopping onions, my hands are cold from washing greens, and my apron is stained with food, I can leave the kitchen knowing that I made a difference in someone’s life—someone I will almost certainly never meet" writes Teen Chef Rita O-Young.

From my sister to the women who have prepared her weekly dinners...

"...Dinner felt like a little miracle tonight. A complete meal, so healthy, unbelievably delicious, and in our own home. Thank you from the bottoms of our hearts. My husband was moved to tears when Michele arrived with the bag of wonders. I think for a moment he felt he was being taken care of, rather than doing the care taking. Your gifts are touching people well beyond patients. My stomach is full, but most of all, my heart is full. What more is there?"

PDN Curator's Choice Exhibit at Milk Gallery, NYC

2011-07-12T02:48:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen this months' Photo District News Magazine, it is devoted to Fine Art Photography. My Burn Portfolio is happily included in The Curator section. Brian Paul Clam, Cravelle Pierre, Julie Grahame, Ariel Shanberg , Jeff Dunas and Michael Zide were this years judges. My work was selected for the Nature/Street Photography category.

The work will be exhibited at Milk Gallery ( 450 West 15th Street) in New York City with an opening reception on Thursday, July 14th from 7-11pm. They are expecting 500- 800 guests and should be a blast.

I will be there and would love to see you there too!

Oaxacan Farewell

2011-07-11T11:24:00.001-07:00

July 10
Paula and Rufina bidding us farewell as we depart for the airport.

July 11
Just as I am going out to water my garden, an incredibly violent storm rages through. I am grateful to be inside as I see branches snap from trees.

On Creativity

2011-07-09T16:32:00.001-07:00

This was the very first trip (out of the past 15) to Mexico that I decided I wanted to work with a model. I wasn't sure how it would happen but looking back I marvel on how it all came about.
It may be several months before I can assimilate it all but for me, this trip was all about ALCHEMY.

July 9

The Art of Green

2011-07-08T06:51:00.000-07:00

This exhibition will featureChicago-area artists and designers who are creating works in a sustainable way and/or raising awareness of environmental issues through their work. I will have 6 images from my Burn portfolio in this exhibition. The exhibition is part of the Green Design series of public programs at Ryerson Woods (located in Deerfield, Illinois).

Circle of Light

2011-07-08T06:15:00.001-07:00

July 8
I took this photo yesterday but loved it so much that I just had to share it. Oaxaca is truly a magical place. I am blogging on an iPhone so it feels both freeing and restricting. Will share more as time permits. Meeting with Zapotec healer today whose ancestor was a form changer and moved freely between the animal and human worlds.

Rainy Night in Oaxaca

2011-07-07T19:48:00.001-07:00

July 7

July 6

2011-07-06T19:39:00.001-07:00

July 6
Danzon dancing in the zocolo of Oaxaca.

The Speed of Lightening

2011-07-05T17:42:00.001-07:00

Whirlwind is the best description for the past few days on the Frontera Grill Staff trip. It has been amazing. Lots of pix.

July 3 at Azul Condesa for a most fabulous traditional Mexican dining experience.

July 4 ~ 2am arrival into the city of Oaxaca.

July 5
Just back from Susana Trilling's cooking school where incredible alchemy took place. 5 moles were created in 2 hours by the incredibly talented Frontera staff.

July 4th Chair Phenomena

2011-07-02T04:43:00.000-07:00

July 2

Every July 4th there is a phenomena that occurs in Evanston as the residents approach their beloved 4th of July parade. EVERYONE wants front row seats. The chairs start lining up days in advance.

And for the past 14 years of the July 4th holidays, I have been in Mexico (or on route) with Chicago's Premier Chef, Rick Bayless, and his staff. This year is no exception. Three regional cuisines in 4 days; Mexico City, Puebla and Oaxaca! I hope to be posting from south of the border with my trusty iphone.

The Mongoose

2011-07-01T05:19:00.000-07:00

July 1

The Mongoose (pl. mongooses) is any member of a family (Herpestidae) of 33[2] species of small carnivorans from southern Eurasia and mainland Africa. Four additional species from Madagascar in the subfamily Galidiinae, which were previously classified in this family, are also referred to as "mongooses" or "mongoose-like". Genetic evidence indicates that the Galidiinae are more closely related to other Madagascar carnivorans in the family Eupleridae, which is the closest living group to the Herpestidae family of mongoose species.

Orientation

2011-06-30T06:44:00.001-07:00

June 30
Where am I and how did I get here!?

Summertime

2011-06-29T06:12:00.001-07:00

June 29

June 28

2011-06-28T06:22:00.000-07:00

June 28

Magical Chicago

2011-06-27T06:48:00.000-07:00

June 27

Sweet Fruit of Summer

2011-06-26T05:51:00.001-07:00

June 26

Daily Photo Diary

2011-06-25T09:31:00.000-07:00

June 23

June 24

June 25

Using Art Making to Change the World

2011-06-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

June 22 ~ Home by TreManda Pewett

Home, an installation piece to discuss homelessness, was created by 11th grader TreManda Pewett, from a 2 day inaugural Art Works Projects' Workshop to Change the World. It was organized by Leslie Thomas, the Executive and Creative Director of Art Works Projects and held at Marwen in Chicago. I was asked to be a creative advisor as students worked on varying topics that included water pollution, domestic and teen violence, bullying, genocide and homelessness. In a mere 2 days the work and ideas that were generated by these very talented youth (ranging from 8th grade to Sr. in High School) was astonishing.

You can learn more about the workshop by visiting their facebook page HERE or by visiting the Art Works Projects website HERE.

Emily Heller ~ Shelf Life

2011-06-22T07:08:00.000-07:00

Emily Heller's new portfolio, Shelf Life, contains photographs that are so sophisticated, luminous, elegant and arresting. I marvel at how these everyday objects are brought to a whole different level thru the use of light, composition and color. In Emily's words...

"These photographs expose the ironies and contradictions of our relationship to food through exploring the tension between moderation and indulgence, the natural and industrial, the ordinary and the unsettlingly strange. A conflict exists between the seductiveness of the photograph and the banality of the object. There are no bright colors, no earthy textures but we still recognize our own eating habits in the forms. The objects continue to be desirable, enticing, and luxurious despite the fact that it is the antithesis of food photography. Eating is a visual experience but what happens when it no longer looks appetizing or is even recognizable as food? How can we reconcile our continuing hunger and desire for more?"

Happy Summer Solstice

2011-06-21T06:53:00.000-07:00

June 21 ~ Summer Solstice

June 20

Sometimes I really surprise myself. I love these images, especially given that today is the summer solstice, the longest day and shortest night of the year.

The Fortune Teller

2011-06-20T04:01:00.000-07:00

July 3 in Mexico City at Arroyo Restaurant

June 19

2011-06-19T18:27:00.000-07:00

June 19th...taken by my father on Father's Day

Days with My Father ~ Phillip Toledano

2011-06-19T05:14:00.001-07:00

My Mum died suddenly on September 4th, 2006

After she died, I realized how much she’d been shielding me from my father’s mental state. He didn’t have alzheimers, but he had no short-term memory, and was often lost.

I took him to the funeral, but when we got home, he’d keep asking me every 15 minutes where my mother was. I had to explain over and over again, that she had died.

This was shocking news to him.

Why had no-one told him?
Why hadn’t I taken him to the funeral?
Why hadn’t he visited her in the hospital?

He had no memory of these events.

After a while, I realized I couldn’t keep telling him that his wife had died. He didn’t remember, and it was killing both of us, to constantly re-live her death.

I decided to tell him she’d gone to Paris, to take care of her brother, who was sick.

‘Days with my father’ is a journal.

A record of our relationship, and the time we spent over the last three years.

2006-2009
Phillip Toledano

Published by Chronicle Books in 2010.

To view the complete project, please go to:
www.dayswithmyfather.com

I find these scraps of writing all over the house… they are a glimpse into his mind, the disquiet he tries to hide from me

Where is everyone?

What’s going on?

How lost he feels.

I asked my father to look in the mirror, while I took his photograph.

Now, you have to realize my dad was very handsome when he was young. When people talk about ‘Film star handsome’, well, that was my dad. In fact, he WAS a film star (of sorts), in Hollywood, during the 1930’s.

So when he looks in the mirror, he sees a man ravaged, a man no longer beautiful, and that upsets him deeply.

You see, he’s still vain at 98. In fact, his vanity can be quite extraordinary.

I tried to take him to the doctor a few months ago, but on the way out, he caught a glimpse of himself in the hall mirror.

He was so horrified with his appearance, that he refused to leave the house until I found a ‘black pencil’ to dye his white hair with.

Because my parents had me so late, my dad was essentially retired when I was growing up.

But for my ambitious, driven father, he wasn’t retired at all, just working on his next career.

Being an artist.

I have so many memories of him listening to opera, sketching, painting, sculpting.

Although he doesn’t paint anymore, he still sees. He still has the artistic impulse.

He was admiring the sunset, saying that he could make a ‘whole series’ of paintings around those wonderful colors…

The urge is still there, even if the physical ability is not.

Sometimes, when we’re talking,

my dad will stop, and sigh, and close his eyes.

It’s then that I know, that he knows.

About my mum.

About everything.

Change of Mind

2011-06-18T06:16:00.000-07:00

June 17

I have been in an agitated state for a few days. It wasn't until yesterday that I realized it was because of this new camera and project. I did a shoot with the camera and and found myself struggling to figure out all the settings. I know nothing of video shooting and do not really want to spend my energies figuring it out. SO, I decided to let it go. I love the patina and smoky residue of my canon 5D and will stay with it for a while longer.

June 18

Taken with a plastic holga lens...now this more like it...low tech with lots of trial and error. I just LOVE the plastic holga lens!

Expansion ~ Paige Bradley

2011-06-17T04:27:00.000-07:00

"From the moment we are born,
the world tends to have a
container already built for us
to fit inside: A social security
number, a gender, a race,
a profession or an I.Q. I ponder
if we are more defined by the
container we are in, rather than
what we are inside. Would we
recognize ourselves if we could
expand beyond our bodies?
Would we still be able to exist
if we were authentically
'un-contained'?"

Paige Bradley

via http://thisiscolossal.com/