I'm So Lazy

I've been meaning to do a lot of things lately, but it hasn't really been happening. And considering it's still only May, I'm ok with that.

I'm slowly working my way into the basement and working on it and I even started painting it, as well as started a painting last week. This is my little set up in the corner right now. My mother and I are arguing about the color however... I want this blue, but she wants a light yellow, but it won't go with the floors, so I may compromise with a lighter blue.
I did start one of my "memory paintings" that I want to do, though. I feel it's going to need a few of each, for it to work, but basically I want to take moments--whether they be nostalgic, embarrassing, or important, I want to try to depict the scenery from memory without any references. This painting particularly is the house I used to live in ... downstairs this old woman and old man lived there and I would always go in their apartment and they'd give me a butterscotch candy and I remember the old man always in the living room sitting in his chair and it being really dark. It's only 16 x 20 and it's a pretty simple concept, which is why I think there needs to be more.

Work in Progress

For one of my finals this semester, I had to create a gallery proposal. I had an idea for a while to cut out a shape from the photograph as a way of displaying holes in memory. Part of the idea came from my psych book: "Most of the time, people want to believe the remain the same, but sometimes they also want to believe they ave changed, and they shuffle and edit the facts in their memory to fit whichever belief is more relevant." After experimenting, instead of one shape being cut out, it evolved into several and I also started to put things behind it, like patterns and colors. It evolved to the photographs being filled with holes and in turn being filled with gaps and revisions of my memory--the places I've been, people I've known, things I've eaten, etc. (a lucky accident because I forgot to bring magazines to cut up.)



I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and I would love to make large versions of these, since these are just models. And to keep experimenting and growing with this method.

Visual Libraries - Signed out books now coming back
Originally uploaded by visual libraries

VISUAL LIBRARIES - Leave your Mark. A collaborative, visual project which encourages you to sign out a Visual Library Book and ‘Leave Your Mark’.


I really liked this idea. Some of the things people have done is really cool and there seems to be a wide variety of people doing it. Too bad it's so far away.

Longing for Productivity

Sure enough exams are dragging on and on. Not that I have the most difficult things to study for, but I more or less am excited to go home, because I am longing for productivity. I am thinking of setting up a studio in my basement at home, since I'm supposed to be repainting it this summer and my room is cramped to begin with.
And as much as I am feeling inspired lately to get out and make things, I have to wonder if it's because I am so finished with school, that I am longing to be able to do something else. I really hope that is not the case, but since I'm recognizing it as becoming a problem, I feel that it won't happen. After all, going home means starting my summer job at the Trattoria, so I imagine my motivation goes much deeper. I'm gonna run with it. I should try to get as much done, or started as possible before I lose my motivation.

One good thing about exams is wasting time on the internet. I finally started looking up information about Florence, since I'll be studying there in the fall. I was a little worried about not being able to use a darkroom for a little more than 3 months, but I found out that The Darkroom, the International School of Photography in Florence rents out darkrooms by the hour or for 12 hours, which makes me really excited.

I'll leave it at this...

"People can correctly know what they think and feel, but they may not know why they are thinking or feeling something."

The Suburban Landscape

After experimenting with night shots in black and white, I decided for my final this semester to try night shots in color, but instead of photographing an urban area, I wanted to take on the Suburban Landscape. I haven't really taken enough pictures yet to call it complete, but I needed to start somewhere. Night shots are interesting on color film and printing them was extremely time consuming, because there is so much color correcting to do between fluorescent and incandescent lighting combined with the sensitivity of color film. More or less it became a focus on lighting and color in different scenes and the effect that can create, but I'm happy with it. These images are from digital scans of my negatives, so it was much easier to color correct in photoshop--maybe I'll try using my digital camera, but I don't want to admit defeat yet.

I'm Excited

So this exhibition has been on for quite a while now, but better late than never.

Jenny Holzer, Green Purple Cross, 2008, and Blue Cross, 2008.

March 12-May 31, 2009 at the Whitney Museum

Jenny Holzer's pioneering approach to language as a carrier of content and her use of nontraditional media and public settings as vehicles for that content make her one of the most interesting and significant artists working today. Alternating between fact and fiction, the public and the private, the universal and the particular, Holzer's work offers an incisive social and psychological portrait of our times. PROTECT PROTECT centers on Holzer's work since the 1990s and is the artist's most comprehensive exhibition in the United States in more than fifteen years.

Here I go with Obsessions Again

I have a tendency to find photographers I like that remind me of my work, or work I want to do and I become obsessed. Last month it was Gail Albert Halaban and her work Out my Window. This month I'm in love with Andy Mattern and his series Trees, Leland Street, and Facades. The scenes depicted appear peaceful and untouched, yet have an eerie feeling as if we're missing something. They are all mundane things--trees at night on an unknown landscape, the interior of an apartment lived in, yet untouched, and nighttime shots of store fronts and buildings forgotten about for the day.

Convention Hall Love

The Death of an Empire

Feast of Santo Niño

Atypical Weekend

The Sensibility of Home

Forgotten Seasons