Under Wraps

www.whyisthiswrapped.com

More Wrapping - Center for Women and Families - National Crime Victims' Rights Week

In continuance of my Commodification project, I am working with the Center for Women and Families on awareness raising for National Crime Victims' Awareness Week. This was a performance and photo shoot on the banks of the Ohio River in Louisville, KY. Ron Jasin is my second shooter for the images that I am in. Check out more information on the Center for Women and Families project, visit www.whyisthiswrapped.com

Microscopic Self Portrait

As a child I remember watching Carl Sagan on PBS take all the elemental ingredients of life and put them together in a big slurry of potential. The result was not life, but a sticky mess of iron, protein, carbon and other key elements. It was the first time I remember thinking “What are we?” I believe reflection on that question is one of the fundamental commonalities that all human beings experience.
In this piece I am contemplating the science and nature of my existence, from what I had for dinner last night to the corpuscles that feed my vision and the nerve endings that provide me the sensory experience of pleasure and pain. All these small pieces somehow converge to create a depiction of me, but they are really just iron, protein, carbon, etc. The piece is an extreme form of navel-gazing and while the sums of my parts are represented, they do not accurately portray the whole. In a world where we are used to following recipes and formulas, it defies logic.

American Gothic

Another image with masks and slightly different coloring. I can't wait to see these printed out large. Someone commented that these mask image reminded them of a modern antique version of American Gothic. Maybe, but I like to think of it as a hybrid between the Chinese and Russian myths of the woman of the snow or frost. It has a more fairytale feel to me. I also want to give thanks to Terry Wunderlich for the super masks.

Dirty Soft

Another image from the recent set. I am constantly amazed at how wonderful my friends are for playing along with my crazy ideas. I'm so lucky to have this energy in my photographs. I think there is a real advantage to a playful approach to staging photos, everyone brings something unexpected to the experience. We play together, we create and I get to indulge my voyeuristic nature. Lucky me! Thanks guys!

Another Image from the Saturday Shoot

Another image from the shoot the other night. A friend whose work I admire suggested I play a little with colors, so I left a hint of the feather and eye color on this image and also used the ochre of the feathers to dirty the image up. Thanks for the suggestion and I'm curious what you all think. I believe the other image has a more sinister quality where this is more tranquil, but still out of the ordinary. More to come!

Recent Studio Work

I had some friends over last Saturday night for drinks and some casual head shot portraits evolved into some more complex play in the studio. I'm so happy with the new pieces and have started processing them in this dirty, antique-looking style. There is something in the aesthetic of old photographs that really appeals to me and I try to bring that into my work. Since I can't be in the darkroom printing tintypes right now, I like working with this digital conversion that is reminiscent of cracked old photos found in the corner of an attic. I like the creepy quality the mask gives to the woman and the stoic look of the man.

I understand that there is a certain morbidity to my work and have struggled with the appeal of main-stream single image photographs. As much fun as it is to make a beautiful image and to have people respond to the "pretty", I think that embracing my shadow self is truly where my most creative and exciting possibilities reside.

A few samples of this work will be forthcoming, as well as a couple of images that are from my commodified humans project.

A closer shot

This is a closeup of my eyebrow hair.

New Microscope Camera

So I just got a cheepo microscopic camera. It's pretty cool and I'm looking forward to really doing something fun with bugs and plant specimens. So far I've had fairly good results with the images I captured of myself but it is difficult to keep focused and must be very close to whatever you are shooting. It also does video capture - I haven't even begin to wrap my mind around how I might use that. Still the obsessive geek in me spent about 40 minutes looking at my pores in the preview mode. I can't do anything large print wise with it because of the 1.3mp limitation, but still really good and might be truly fun for working in small things like tintypes or in grid installations. Nifty new toy!

Here's the long-awaited art sale info:

Last Minute Holiday Art Sale
Sunday, December 21st
11am - 3pm
881 Clarks Lane

Artists Participating Include:
Ron Jasin
Suzane Edds
Gary Bell
Scott Scarboro
Terry Wunderlich
Michelle Amos
Mary Yates
and more!

Join us for some holiday cheer and a lot of cool, affordable art!

Don't forget, we are giving away gifts from the artists! Come get some art!

KFW / LMDC Project Gets Some Press

About a year ago I was selected to be a partner artist with sculptor Joyce Ogden for a special project with the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections to create a community art work for the exit lobby of the jail. We recently got some nice press about the project and some of the other components that have evolved in the process of working in the jail in the Courier Journal. Check the article by Dianne Heilenman

New Chemistry Experiements

I've been in the darkroom. So much fun!!! I've been playing with gum printing and emulsion coating on a nice, sturdy watercolor paper. I think the best part is that even though I have used these processes before, I have to rediscover them each time. That's the one thing that I truly love about the darkroom, the sense of magic and wonder I feel when something actually works.

Ron built a UV exposure unit for his screen printing and I'm finding it very useful for my alternative processes. It's so much handier to have a powerful source of UV light than the sun, particularly since it's very overcast in Kentucky right now. Gear is such a geeky thing to love, but I like chemistry experiments and playing with dangerous light. It makes me feel a little more alive.

My friend Ethel was my gracious model for these images that I'm doing the gum and emulsion prints with. She was a total trooper hiking through the woods with me and getting in awkward positions for my human connection to nature photography. I truly love the interaction with the model, it's a true collaboration. The shot above wouldn't have happened if she hadn't suggested putting the sticky thistle pod into the shot. I'd been carrying that thing for about an hour, dropping it multiple times, and starting to resent picking it up. It was a perfect contrast to the lush ferns and the beautiful tones and soft texture of her hand.

Rollins

I saw Henry Rollins last night here in L'ville. He spoke for well over two hours. Not only was he brilliant and funny, but he gave me pause to think about some larger issues that have been troubling me. He shared some great stories about his travels around the world and how isolated people have become. Instead of being afraid of new cultures his approach is to hold out his big tattooed arm and just say "Hi, I'm Henry, what's up?" His experience is usually good with this approach and he has managed to travel through Pakistan, Laos and many other countries and feel welcome and truly get to know the other people. He is the example of the beautiful American vs. the typical ugly American tourist we ususally hear about. If we could all work towards being more open with eachother, even our neighbors, we would could perhaps evolve to a higher state of being. In other ways, Rollins also inspired me to think about how eveyone hates their jobs and is dissatisfied with the drudgery we all feel in our day to day routines. Eveything is based in fear, that's why people don't just get out there and do what they love. How would we transform the world if we all just said no to the BS and said yes to living. Rollins seems to truly live his life at 100% - sucking the marrow out of his expeirience on the planet. That's very punk rock and a great lesson in not racing toward death like we're all out of control. We are the masters of our lives and experiences.

Exclusive......rant.....

So, I recently was told that a local non-profit art space was going out of business and that an Executive Director search was going on. Having been a veteran of a particularly successful small arts non-profit I said naively - "Gee - why didn't I know about all this...I would have been interested in applying." I was told "oh, it was a very "exclusive" search...they were looking for someone with their own money..."!!! What the fuck!!! Since when were non-profit ED's supposed to be people of privilege? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I thought that was the board of director's role...to be "in" the moneyed crowd and speak on behalf of the organization to raise funds. Have boards forgotten their roles in arts non-profits? My observation is that most boards are willing to sit around and graze on their social luncheons and say what fabulous work "their" organizations are doing while they are actually doing very little for the organization in question. Too many cases in point here in my local art market...what is it like in the rest of the small non-profit art world...thoughts?

Masking Identity

Several recent experiences have me thinking about identity and the sharing of the true self. I'm terribly disturbed by the apparent phoniness I see around me and indeed perpetuate myself in the name of being a polite member of society. These masks are part of the everyday compromises that we all seem to be willing to make in order to feign survival in the wholly unnatural social order that is the world of earning our livings and fitting in. This is the reason that people don't speak up and tell oppressive or even misguided individuals our true thoughts when asked for an opinion when money is in play. Pure simple survival. The very real fear of judgment and the repercussions of truly speaking ones mind in the environment of business causes us to create sub-personalities to deal more gracefully with these situations. How do we cast off these masks to become truly effective communicators who stand up for our ideals without completely alienating the other party?
Thoughts?

Art Studio Sale!

Several Unfair artists and I are planning a holiday studio sale - low prices on high art!
Dates / Times TBA - but plan to attend.
I'm studio-cleaning and have some treasures that I'm going to be letting go of for low, low prices to make room for new, fabulous work.
Stay posted!

Back in the darkroom....

Ok, I've be lazy an in absentia. Well, not really, I've actually been working my tail off which hasn't done much for keeping this blog updated.

So here's the low-down...
I've just completed study sketches for a new body of work and I'm totally jazzed to get photographing and printing. The work will be dealing with the themes of cloaking identity and shaping our outward appearance for public consumption.

The images I have started prepping will be very different from my older work. I'm looking for a clean, simplified expression of identity vs. the more lush, ornate work I have been accustomed to. I think this will be challenging for me because I'm so used ornate imagery and using the less is more philosophy is very new to me but feel that is one step I need to take to grow as an artist.

Artist Talk - LVAA's Food for Thought

Kat Squared - tintype from digital positive 2007

I'm no stranger to stage fright, that's why I choose to be behind the camera instead of in front of it. So I surprised myself by agreeing to do an art talk for the Louisville Visual Art Association (LVAA), now which I find myself in preparations for. Artist talks are truly wonderful and I really love to hear about inspiration, motivations and the subtleties of craft from people who amaze me with their work and visions. So now I’m in this role and I have to admit that while I’m confident in my work, I’m a little nervous about following last month’s speaker Jim Grubola who did an intelligent and interesting presentation at LVAA’s Food for Thought. Jim’s talk was truly inspiring and covered his art historical inspiration, his love of grids and rendering reflections as well as photographic images of his real-world references for his art making. Not to mention that his speaking style was warm and unpretentious, and possessed an element of humor that left the audience with a good sense of his artwork and techniques. Indeed he will be a hard act to follow.

Still, I’m look forward to my presentation and know that the bar has been set pretty high. I believe I’m up to the task with only slight apprehension about speaking to a room of art-lovers and connoisseurs. My talk will focus primarily on my photographic work in historic processes and I hope to be as engaging a speaker as my predecessors in this Food for Thought program.

For more information of the Louisville Visual Art Association and the Food for Thought program visit:

http://www.louisvillevisualart.org

And on James Grubola:

http://louisville.edu/a-s/finearts/faculty/grubola.html

Cat and I

This is a picture of me with a photo of my cat Gabriel. I love this cat in a crazy cat lady way. I don't kiss his little gray lips or anything, but some of the finest moments in my life revolve around making Gabe purr. Once while I was doing work for my Tattoo/Fetish series my mother, who is normally adores contemporary art, asked me why this series (www.vividblack.net/tattoo) was so disturbing and why couldn't I just take pictures of kittens on glass tables. I struggle with the kitten-art thing because truly I would love to be taking adorable pictures of cats all day long, but that doesn't seem like a good path for a contemporary artist. Maybe I'll get a chance with some commercial art someday, but it seems like mostly dog fashion (Collars and Couture) is what I get the opportunity to do. I'm not knocking the pups at all, I love doing that stuff, but it seems there should be fashion industry ops for cats too, ya know?

Mariposa Study #2 - painted photograph

Owl butterflies from Key West sanctuary. They look like little cosmic tree fungi with big eyes.