October artist Lecture: #1- Kate Gilmore

I really enjoyed Kate Gilmore’s lecture and it’s probably one of the best lectures that I’ve been to since my years at VCU. I especially liked how she didn’t even take an art class until her last two years of undergrad and how she started in sculpture only to move to photography, then finally to video. It just goes to show that you should never limit yourself to just one medium to express yourself or your work.

It’s funny when she talked about “Star Bright, Star Might” and how it’s somewhat about how girls have this idea in their head that you should never mess up or hurt your face because unlike her I never really had my mother printing that into my head, but I have grown up with that sort of mentality in my mind. Especially since I’ve been in an accident where my face was in danger of being fatally injured and actually did somewhat mess it up. Long story short, I got dragged by a horse. While getting off, I got stuck on a piece of twine that was attached to the saddle and was stuck half way on and half way off the horse, so I was practically underneath it’s belly and of course it took off running. While it was running I was being kicked by its galloping hooves, and somewhere in between there and finally falling of the saddle onto a gravel road scratching up my entire body, my front tooth got pulled forward and a large piece chipped off (half of my tooth). This fatal accident happened ironically on New Years day, but more importantly a couple years after having braces which made my teeth perfectly aligned. As a young girl it really damaged my self-esteem not having my perfect smile anymore, so I think from that is where I got the idea in my mind to damage anything but your face. Plus I think the media projects the idea that you’re face is what matters, especially if you’re a girl. So back to the lecture….

Although her work was overall very interesting, I found the way she talked about her work to be even more fascinating. I don’t think I could choose a favorite video however, because they were all equally good. When she talked about how she used specific characters that perhaps at first you despise or hate, I did eventually start to feel sympathetic towards them and their situations, particularly the “With Arms Wide Open” and “Main Squeeze”, which because of my fear of being stuck in a situation such as that, not necessarily claustrophobia, but I did almost have to watch it with one eye open. Her attitude and outlook towards her work is something everyone should use, because you do learn from your mistakes and/or failures. I also found it very interesting when she mentioned that she does sell her videos, but in slots of only 5. To think of having a collection of videos sounds strange, but considering how society seems to be focused on the media, television, & the internet, it makes sense.

Train Set Videos

While in an individual meeting with paul, we talked about how train set model enthusiasts sometimes put small tiny cameras on the fronts of their trains and create videos of the train making its way around the town if you will. So I went on youtube searching for a good quality video, but let me tell you i did have to go through a lot and some where VERY cheesy and terrible in terms of video quality as well as miniature quality.

-This is a bad quality of video, but I like the camera aspect and the sound effects that come with it in that position. Like from the Ann Kroeber lecture the sound effects from the train, not to mention the camera aspect, really put you in that place and make you feel as if you really are there.

-This is the train video with the best video as well as miniature quality, but it's a little weird and cheesy b/c of the dido song attached with it.

And with almost any youtube search you discover there are a lot of crazy people out there willing to make fools of themselves.

Lost in America

So part of my research towards each landscape involves searching the internet (soon books) focusing on particular environments for photographs and information that depict the types or certain areas that I might want to mimic in my landscapes or just use as references. While searching the internet for these inspiring images I stumbled upon an artist, Troy Paiva, who uses ambient moonlight, multicolored strobe pops and light painting with a flashlight to create a eerie surreal like mood to rundown abandoned junkyards, buildings, etc. out in the American desert.

I really like his night photography and use with ambient moonlight, but the use of strobe lights particularly the color red reminded me of the idea surrounding aliens especially out in the desert. Growing up in Nebraska and watching a couple movies, one in particular, I had a small fear of aliens and spent a small period of time sleeping in my parents room because of this fear that I was going to be abducted in the middle of the night. The movie was called “Fire in the Sky” and what really set it off was at the end of the movie my friend told me it was based on a true story. Then the slumber party turned into a night of scary aliens stories, the most coming from the girl whose house we were at which was a large farm and her dad had had people calling in the middle of the night claiming there were lights in their fields and so on. Then when I went home the next day I asked my dad, who was in the air force at that time, if he or anyone had seen aliens? He said that they did have people calling in about seeing things in the sky and he said that he had heard stories from pilots claiming they’d seen things while flying at night. Although the thing with sleeping in my parents room faded away I guess I still do somewhat have a small fear of aliens.. :)

Anywho, back to his work I like that he uses the American desert as well as abandoned places, but above all I really enjoy the surrealist mood and possible narrative that he creates with his use of multi-colored strobes and choice of location.

When it comes to my work I’ve been thinking about incorporating night time into all of my landscapes as well as touching on one of my childhood fear of aliens, but perhaps saving that for my landscape of the Midwest.

Inspiring Desert Landscapes:

Tony Paiva’s work:

http://www.lostamerica.com/

youTube

So i found this while i was searching youtube for videos of train sets... enjoy

Anthony Goicolea

In my last meeting with Paul he showed me Anthony Goicolea’s most current work in which he digitally composites photographs that depict seemingly apocalyptical landscapes, yet scenes and pictures are taken from present day locations. Not only are they beautiful black and white images with interesting compositions, but with a deeper look into them you start to notice little things such as people either sitting on a bench or laying in a hammock, and fish that because of the subject matter surrounding them appear to be dead. His craftsmanship with digitally combing particular scenes and landscapes is exquisite. I also love how he focuses on the environment and de-emphasizes the human figure, but yet still reveals small signs of a human presence to create a narrative aspect to his work, much like what I’m trying to create with my series.

”In these large-scale black and white photographs, the artist digitally composites elements culled from different locations and combines them into new topographies. Seemingly familiar elements such as telephone wires, power lines, and factories are juxtaposed in a way that torques reality and compresses space and time, creating subtly off-kilter and barely inhabitable worlds. The dense woodland environments of his earlier works are replaced with desolate urban and industrial wastelands that, like its few inhabitants, appear to be atrophying. The sky is a major character in many of the photographs. Thick-layered clouds dominate the composition or slide into the frame from above like an impending threat. This emphasis on the sky conjures Northern Europe's romantic and early nineteenth-century American landscape painters. Like those artists, Goicolea also de-emphasizes the human figure in favor of the landscape, alluding to an alienation or disconnection from their surroundings.

Goicolea, whose photographs are often energized by paradoxes, also alludes to the history of cinema, including Film noir, French new wave, and science fiction. The bombed out building in Deconstruction suggests the opening scene from Fellini's La Dolce Vita, the gondolas in Sky Lift are reminiscent of The Third Man, a film by Carol Reed with Orson Welles, and the skyline in Smoke Stack takes on a Dickensian quality. These familiar elements are catapulted into dreamlike scenes of decay that are displaced or dissolve into each other. The environments, however, undoubtedly come to us from the future, alluding to films that present palpable visions of post-industrial worlds, including Blade Runner and The Children of Men.”

- excerpt from the artist statement presented with his “Almost Safe” exhibition

falsifying the Real

Last semester working with both miniatures in my first half of senior portfolio as well as my concepts class I came upon an artist, Olivo Barbieri, who although didn’t work with the same media as I, he does however photograph landscapes from an aerial perspective using a tilt shift method with his lens that causes his environments to look as if they were massive intricate scaled model cities. Therefore falsifying his audience to believe the real is in fact fake. The only shame is that one; I couldn’t find any statements from the artist himself, and two, I’ve also come to find that this method of using a tilt shift lens (which is quite expensive) has been done repeatedly, most with the cheaper ways of accomplishing the same looking images with lens babies and photoshop. It’s a shame to know that it has been somewhat overdone, but that seems to happen with everything these days.

These are a couple of his images:

Now here are a couple of images that have been done by other people using photoshop or a lensbaby instead of an expensive tilt shift lens: