Giles Ripley's "My New Best Friend"

I stumbled across this short film by Giles Ripley and thought it was absolutely amazing! His films are comedic while they satirize man's ever-growing anxiety for achievement. Viewers connect through their own fears of rejection and not living up to life's potential. "The narratives running through the work are often fictionalized or exaggerated accounts of my real life," says Ripley. I think we all have experiences in our life that are reminiscent of this film... at least I can think of a few.

My New Best Friend

Visions Show Follow-Up

Thanks to everyone that showed up at the opening night on June 4th! It was the first of many First Friday openings at Visions hair salon. Keep your eyes on 2300 W Main Street! Also, if you're a local Richmond Artist, join The Red Hand Society. ADVOCATE RICHMOND ART!




My work will remain up through the end of June. If you haven't seen it, please check it out!

Visions Solo Show: 6-4-10

Visions the Art of Hair
2300 W Main St
Richmond, VA
7 pm

This coming First Friday, I have my first solo show at Visions Salon! On display will be Still in Life and After I Die in their entirety, Assent (single image from The Ribbon series), and most of my ceramic work from this year. There is also discussion of having a local band at the opening.

This show has been put together by The Red Hand Society of Richmond and Visions' owner Doug Curtler and awesome stylist/representative Meaghan Hobson. Come and enjoy some local art, support The Red Hand Society, or even get a fabulous hair cut! Also, look forward to more collaborations between Red Hand and Visions on future First Fridays.

Visions' Bio:

Visions the Art of Hair opened its doors on Main Street over thirty years ago in the heart of the fan. Owner Doug Curtler planned to utilize the space for two things: hair and art. The front lobby was put to task as an art gallery, showcasing artists from all across America, and permanently housed a collection of paintings by local artist, Greig Leach. The main rooms were used as the body of the salon, and the back as the owners personal sculpture studio. The studio has since been converted into private wax and massage rooms, while the owner has moved his focus to the "sculpting" of hair. The salon is excited about their latest prospect of joining the Red Hand Society in reopening the lobby as a gallery to support Richmond artists and further enriching their relationships within the community.

Rodeo Christmas, Still in Life, 2009
Assent, The Ribbon, 2009
Arctic Mask, After I Die, 2008

Untitled, 15''x10'' Stoneware Jar, 2010

What are chairs, anyway?

Why have I been so subconsciously interested in chairs during the process of Still in Life? Unsure of how this could have gone unnoticed for so long, I have put together a little research on the history of the chair in hopes that it may shed some light on my subliminal self. Perhaps 'the chair' has been anthropomorphically ingrained to represent the following:

Chair:

(n)A chair is a raised surface used to sit on, commonly for use by one person. Chairs often have the seat raised above floor level, supported by four legs.

Types of chairs:

Stool: chair without a back or armrests (when raised, it is a bar stool)
Armchair: chair with arms
Recliner: chair with folding action and a footrest
Seat: permanently fixed chair on a train or in a theater
Saddle: chair meant for riding
Wheelchair: chair with wheels
Swing: hanging chair

"The chair is of extreme antiquity and simplicity, although for many centuries and indeed for thousands of years it was an article of state and dignity rather than an article of ordinary use." [thank you, Wikipedia] Think: thrones, committee directors, academic leaders.

Chairs are often used as a symbol of power and wealth, but they can also represent institution, rigidity, strength, comfort, laziness, absence, and even death (etc). I would say that a chair could probably be fashioned to portray almost anything. Furthermore, it's not always about the physical appearance of the chair, but about how, where, or what is interacting with the chair. A chair with a piece of clothing flung over the armrest gives the viewer a completely different feeling than an empty chair.

Most of the chairs I have portrayed in my photographs are empty. Their emptiness represents the loss or absence of an inhabitant or a space worth achieving (as in "Portrait of a Throne"). Chairs provide a sort of architectural knowledge and stability within their simplicity, not to mention they are universal in their accessibility.

BFA Thesis Follow-up

Thanks to everyone who showed up for the VCU photo senior's BFA thesis production last Friday. A lot of hard work went into refurbishing the Richmond National Bank building over the past two months and it more than paid off. There was such a great turn out that the show was open for an additional hour. Special thanks to my mom and aunt for driving as far away as Philadelphia for the exhibition!

Here are some installation photos of Still in Life:


It wasn't until I began installing my work last week that I realized how many of my images include chairs. It sounds strange to have gone unnoticed for so long, but the majority of my research has long been focused on animal symbolism, anthropomorphism, the domestication of animals, still lifes, taxidermy, and influential artists.

There must be a subconscious symbolism that works seamlessly with my concept. While all the photos are in a domestic setting where chairs are abundant, I am unquestionably biased towards single-seat furniture... at least in terms of this series.

VCU Photography's BFA Thesis Show: 5-7-10

This Friday is the VCU senior photographer's BFA Thesis Show from 6-9pm. There will be lots of great work, refreshments, and discussion. Not to mention, it's taking place in the Richmond National Bank building located on East Broad Street. The now empty sky scraper was built in 1929 and still has some of the old interior architecture visible. Check it out!


Some of the participating artists:

Arlie Trowbridge
The 70's Addition,2010
Urban Revisions


Kerry McDonnell
Untitled (Places for Breathing), 2010
Graffiti Skies Photography


John Cameron
Required, 2009
John Cameron Photography


Sarah D'Eugenio
Indentured Servants, 2010
Sara Marie D'Eugenio


Also, look for my Still in Life series.

Sarah Hauser
The Second Departure, 2010

4-11-10 Artist Blog, Christopher Reiger

Christopher Reiger

"My work is principally concerned with contemporary man's mutable conception of Nature." As a child, "I anthropomorphized animals and cast them as key players in an epic production of which I was a part... As I matured, however, my childhood love of nature evolved into a fascination with biology and ethology, an intellectual ontogenesis like that impelled by the European Enlightenment."

"Incidentally, we've realized that the divide between the imagination and reason is unnatural: We learn an increasing number of facts about Nature, we understand ourselves to be apart from it, and our experience of it is therefore less complete."

"My artwork is born of this apparent opposition. The paintings are celebratory hybrids of myth, natural history, and science; the world they picture stretches between the tidy "truth" and the messy question. They depict a world in flux, a Nature imploding and dissolving. But this dissolution is also an opening of the senses, the seepage of magic and mystery into the picture. The drawings are poetic vignettes that explore the same ideas and questions."

The above are the highlights of Christopher Reiger's artist statement. http://www.christopherreiger.com/statement.html


Synesthesia #1, 2008

This was the first piece of Reiger's that I first stumbled upon at http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/seeing_antlers_feeling_dendrites/. The article explains the fascinating condition of Synesthesia and how art can give the masses a glance into its world of meaning.


Didelphis Virginiana (Virginia's Double Womb), 2006


Canis Lupis (Dog wolf), 2006

In his 2006 work, Reiger combines drawing, scientific classification, and words in his drawings.

4-7-10 Idea Post

Biology

-A natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy.

-The term was introduced independently by Karl Friedrich Burdach, Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus, and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck between 1800 and 1802 AD. It is inspired by the Greek word bios (life) and the suffix logia (study of).

Above is a diagram created by Ernst Haeckel called The Tree of Life
wikipedia.com

-----

Recently I have been thinking more about my collections of animal assortments (if you will), inspired by the work on the very top floor of the Anderson Gallery. I was jealous of the bug collection(s) and wonder if the person/people collected or ordered the bugs. The preservation and presentation wasn't top notch, but was impressive overall.

Collections (particularly of animals) and their presentation are art within themselves, but they are not appreciated in the same way 'art labeled' works are- they're given museum quality appreciation. I'm not sure why I have such an interest in this quality, but I can guess.

The Naturalist Center (Leesburg, VA) is only down the street from where I grew up in Northern Virginia. It is the biggest interactive collection of natural history objects I have ever encountered. They have over 36,000 hands-on collection objects including skeletons, furs, animal preservations, bugs, shells, etc. They are a branch of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

One day I aspire to have a fraction of this type of collection and display within my own house.



^^The Naturalist Center in Leesburg, Va^^

4-5-10 Artist Post, ROA

ROA

ROA is a street artist also known as the Gent Zoo Keeper and the King of Doel Jungle who hand paints large black and white murals of animals: rats, pigs, rabbits, and cows (from what I can find). He often targets decaying urban areas, which began with the outlying abandoned buildings and warehouses in the outskirts of Ghent, Belgium (home town). He replicates animals found in the area and seeks to embody their amazing ability to adapt to urban environments and become scavengers in order to survive.

ROA's artwork went global when he ventured to urban New York, London, Berlin, Warsaw, and Paris to paint his often depicted cross-sectioned animals and city scavengers.

A majority of ROA's work shows a transformation, whether it be through his painting of the animal or emphasized in the environment.

A piece that hung in the Gallerie Itinerrance in Paris earlier this year

[From the same gallery as above] The metal pieces in this artwork are on hinges that allow the viewer to alter the work seeing two sides of the animal (interior neuro-structure vs epidermal layer).

Unlabeled location

Unlabeled location

Unlabeled location: In this piece, the yellow door flips open to show a complete rabbit (instead of a skeletal head) as well

ROA's website has very little information and I'm not sure whether the photographs are taken by himself or by fans. Understandably, he wishes to remain anonymous.

http://www.roaweb.org/

Anderson Gallery

I entered three pieces to the Anderson Gallery Student show, two of which got in. =) Stoked!


Both are images from the fall semester of senior portfolio (2009).

4-1-10 Idea Post

More thoughts on the domestication of animals:

At what point during anthropomorphism or domestication do animals lost their identity? When (if) do they stop being animals and become humanized beings or objects?

What IS an animal? How does our culture define animalia?

Animals are a major group of mostly multicellular eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently. All animals are also heterotrophs, meaning they must ingest other organisms for sustenance.

The word "animal" comes from the Latine word animal meaning 'with soul.' In everyday colloquial usage, the word usually refers to non-human animals. Frequently only closer relatives of humans such as vertebrates or mammals are meant in colloquial use. The biological definition of the word refers to all members of the Kingdom Animalia including humans.

wikipedia.org

I would suspect most people think of wild animals when they hear the word 'animal.' We use 'animal' as an adjective pertaining to the physical, sensual, or carnal nature of humans rather than our spiritual or intellectual nature. At one point, all animals were 'wild' or undomesticated. At what point do we stop referring to an animal as 'wild'? Is a caged lion or tiger still wild?
Remember: Domestication is a process of selection in which animals or plants become accustomed to human provision/control.

In conclusion:

At what point did the goose cease being a migratory majestic that signaled the change of seasons and begin to play the role of community pond accessory whose fecal matter covers grass to the point of non-enjoyment?

Human ignorance sound familiar?

3-30-10: Individual Meeting with Tom

This meeting was primarily a discussion of recent images. I showed the following:


We agreed this image is a little flat.


This was the image I re-shot from the midterm critique. Over spring break my wide angle lens broke so I have been using my fixed 50mm. The quality of glass isn't as nice as the other and it also makes shooting wider angle shots in small rooms VERY frustrating. I wasn't able to include both the top of the door frame and the air vent in the bottom corner- thus emphasizing the confusing scale discussed during the earlier critique. I would like to re-shoot this again, but would have to borrow a wide angle lens from someone. Tom and I agreed this image is important and strong, so a re-shoot is very important.



The bottom of these two images: Tom suggested I use a different animal because I already have two images using animals with antlers. He suggested the bunny in the top image. He also suggested playing with the scale of the rabbit in the image to relate it to the above image of the small door, arm chair, and human-dressed bunnies. This is something I will consider, but I'm not terribly excited about photoshop. All of my images thus far have been void of photoshop except for color correction and some spot cleaning.


Image without flash


Image with flash

Which do you think is stronger and why? What do you think of the tag on the right-most fur? Is it distracting? How do you interpret it? Include it? Photoshop it out?

Input on other images is always appreciated.

3-29-10 Artist Post, Chris Jordan

Chris Jordan

While this artist may seem to relate more to my earlier work at VCU, he is still relevant to my new work and interests.

His series The Message from Gyre was shot at Midway Atoll, a tiny beach near the middle of the North Pacific, and portrays the negative effects of pollution on the albatross population. He photographs deteriorating albatross chicks who have died from eating toxic waste. While the dead birds' stomach contents seem exaggerated, they aren't. Every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from their toxic diet of human waste and starvation.

He explains:
"To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent."

"Exploring around our country’s shipping ports and industrial yards, where the accumulated detritus of our consumption is exposed to view like eroded layers in the Grand Canyon, I find evidence of a slow-motion apocalypse in progress. I am appalled by these scenes, and yet also drawn into them with awe and fascination. The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical and ironic, and even darkly beautiful."

"My hope is that these photographs can serve as portals to a kind of cultural self-inquiry. It may not be the most comfortable terrain, but I have heard it said that in risking self-awareness, at least we know that we are awake."





The Message from Gyre, 2009

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

3-24-10 Idea Post

Photography vs Human Vision


I re-read a chapter in Proust was a Neuroscientist (Jonah Lehrer) this weekend while I was waiting for my flat tire to get changed, only this time I took notes.

Chapter 5 on Paul Cezanne: The Process of Sight touches on the development of photography and its effect on the painting world. "How could the human hand compete with the photon?" (pg 99). While the era of painting came to an end with the invention and availability of the photograph, not all artists believed in its ability to depict realism.

It was thought by many (and still is for that matter) that the human eye acts just like the lens of a camera: collecting and processing millions of light particles to be translated into a visual plane for brain comprehension. In fact, the brain and imagination play an unexpected and even more vital role in visual perception. "If the mind did not impose itself on the eye, then our vision would be full of voids. For example, because there are no light sensitive cones where the optic nerve connects to the retina, we each have a literal blind spot in the center of the visual field. But we are blind to our own blind spot: our brain unfailingly registers a seamless world." (pg 117)

With the realization that "the mind makes the world, just as a painter makes a painting," Paul Cezanne invented modernist art and was a major player in post-impressionism (pg 113). "I tried to copy nature," Cezanne confessed, "but I couldn't. I searched, turned, looked at it from every direction, but in vain" (pg 104).

Cezanne sought to paint the world as our eyes interpret it, one carefully contemplated brush stroke at a time. He abandoned pointillism and began painting entire images in patches and strokes he called les taches and les touches. His paintings also began to incorporate large blank areas of canvas he called nonfinito. Many viewed his paintings as incomplete without realizing that he had dissected our vision well before his time. He left it up to the viewer's eyes and mind to complete his paintings.

"The mind is not a camera. As Cezanne understood, seeing is imagining." (pg 118)
Mon Sainte-Victoire seen from Lauves, 1904-1905

"Modern neuroscientific studies of the visual cortex have confirmed the intuitions of Cezanne... visual experience transcends visual sensations. Cezanne's mountain arose from the empty canvas because the brain, in a brazen attempt to make sense of the painting, filled in its details." (pg 117).

Foliage, 1895-1900

I strongly recommend this book to EVERYONE. Not only does it have this great chapter on Paul Cezanne, it also has chapters on Marcel Proust's The Method of Memory, Walt Whitman's The Substance of Feeling, Auguste Escoffier The Essence of Taste, Igor Stravinsky The Source of Music and more. You will appreciate the world in an entirely different way, I promise!

3-21-10 Artist Post, Tobias Gundorff Boesen & Kate MccGwire

Tobias Gundorff Boesen

I found this artist and his short film on notcot.org. It's a great site to look on for artists and inspiration.

The video below (Out of a Forest) speaks about the domestication of nature in several ways. The animals have been anthropomorphized and their home (the forest) has been domesticated by household furnishings and decorations. Man has disrupted the 'chain of life' as seen in the end of the video for nothing more than a cheap magic trick.

Out Of A Forest from Tobias Gundorff Boesen.

Questions/thoughts I have been contemplating lately:

What are animals? How are they defined? At what point in man's domestication of nature do animals stop being animals? Are they always animals or do we take away a defining characteristic to claim it as our own? Why do we domesticate nature and animals?

Another artist I looked at recently is Kate MccGwire


Her methods of working seem familiar in the sense of my ever growing collection of animal remnants.

"I gather, collate, re-use, layer, peel, burn, reveal, locate, question, duplicate, play and photograph," is how she describes her work.

"Intrinsic to her method is the collecting and sorting of materials from hundreds of different sources over a period of months, even years. In turn, pieces evolve intuitively as if out of the subconscious, the language evocative rather than purely illustrative. As the work takes shape, a new, playful reality emerges, so that the object itself becomes a sort of prism, refracting the layers of meaning and cultural associations buried within, the quantity of materials used sometimes deliberately overwhelming, as if charged with a power and ambition beyond the reach they possess when seen in isolation."
(an excerpt from her artist statement)

http://www.katemccgwire.com/

Retch, 2007

Vex, 2008

Vice, 2009

Urge, 2009

Not only do I appreciate the materials MccGwire uses and her technique of gathering, but I find her choice of installation locations also very compelling. They suit another side of my art as well- the fashion-esque sharp lighting and moody environment.

Visiting Artist Lecture: Sanford Biggers 3-11-10

Sanford Biggers

Sanford Biggers was a member of the VCU faculty (sculpture department) whose work appears in the form of sculpture, graphic design, installations, video, music, and performance art. He is a voice for African American culture through pop culture, hip-hop, and dance that is often combined with his personal experiences through Buddhism. His work explores racial and cultural relations throughout history and how they continue to affect society today.

Mandala of the Bodhisattva II was the one piece he showed during his lecture that I found interesting. He collaborated with other artists to build a 16x16 hand cut linoleum floor to be used in a dance competition. The design was inspired by the mandala and synchronized dancing. A mandala (meaning 'essence' or 'completion') is a diagram that has spiritual significance in Buddhism. The project continues to be displayed in museums with the very first dance scuff marks still visible. Conditions of opening up the dance floor to audiences in museums follows Mandala of the Bodhisattva II wherever it is installed.

Mandala of the Bodhisattva II, 2000

An example of a mandala

Unlike the other recent artist lectures I have attended, I found Bigger's lecture somewhat disappointing. I feel he jumped around between projects quickly and had little explanation for some. It left me feeling disconnected.

3-15-10 "Animalia" Center of Fine Art Photography Competition

I just submitted three images to The Center for Fine Art Photography's "Animalia" competition.

The show's theme:

Animals represent strength, agility, power, royalty, vulnerability and fertility. They serve as important symbols in popular culture, national identity, religion, ecology, mythology and art. The Center is looking for images that insightfully portray the diversity of the animal kingdom.

The Juror is Karen Irvine- the Curator and Manager of Publications of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago.