Lenscratch

Wow.  When I entered Photolucida’s Critical Mass, I never expected such immediate and heartfelt feedback.  I don’t know what I expected, really— maybe my work to disappear into the void, except it hasn’t.  At least for some people, it’s spoken to them in some way and that is so amazing to me.

Today I received the best email (which I will keep for myself) and a link to a blog post featuring me in Aline Smithson’s Lenscratch Blog.  Lenscratch is one of Source Photographic Review’s 10 Photography-Related Blogs You Should Read, in case you aren’t reading it already.

This and a few bites for group shows and even a solo show have left me feeling really good and itching to make a lot more work.  Every time I start feeling like the odd person out, feel uncool or like I’m somehow not as deserving as a lot of the other artists out there, I need to reread Aline’s post and remember that different can be good.  I need to stop worrying and follow what excites me, because when I stop worrying about what other people think and just trust myself, what I make is much more honest and much more me.  I know this is what I’m meant to be doing.  Thank You, Aline.

The Fall of Photo

I feel like I start each entry these days with “So, I’ve been busy and haven’t posted in a while…”, which is basically true. But this season is going to be the Fall of Photo , I swear!

I started a new day job a few weeks ago, as Recruitment Coordinator at the New England School of Photography — which is where I went to school and also work part-time with Caleb in the Digital Lab. It’s been a great start and I’m excited about working to get folks interested in the school and the program. It’s fall college fair season, so I’ve been traveling around and talking to a lot of high school students. One student told me recently that her school needed to use their darkroom for storage space, so they don’t offer a photography class anymore. Heartbreaking!

I also participated in Jamaica Plain Open Studios — a weekend-long event in my neighborhood in which over 200 artists open their studios or join group spaces to show and sell their work. I sold a few small prints and talked to many, many people. It was energizing but also a little exhausting.

After working hard this summer on promoting my previous work, I feel a serious and impatient desire to spend more time making new work.

Also, have I mentioned that I finished the redesign of my website?

Marc Cote

This past weekend I visited Steph at JP Open Studios and while there ran into someone I met at the Danforth opening.  Marc Cote is the Chair of the Art and Music Department at Framingham State College and makes some really interesting works on paper and sculptural pieces.  Something about how simultaneously dark and yet fragile a lot of it is really speaks to me.  Here is how he describes his work:

The images that I create have their roots in snippets of stories that I cull from children’s tales, myths and fables, novels from past and present and my own personal experiences. Character development, the quirkier the better, has always fascinated me. I use physiognomy and gesture to depict characters in varying social stances.

I’m interested in our secret, rarely revealed egos. Often in my prints, I try to simultaneously show our inner feelings and the outer visages that reflect or shelter those emotions. I want to capture the temporal nature of the person: confident, magnetic, animalistic, materialistic, giddy, downtrodden. I want to show the objects we desire and describe the manner in which we seek them.

I scored this fantastic piece and it’s now hanging on my livingroom wall.

Someone likes my art

I was so surprised to find out that the I Like This Art blog mentioned me!

Click on the picture to go take a look.

old scans

Sorting through old film scans on a Saturday while I’m at work. Odds and ends.

And of course, the obligatory long-exposure-at-night-colorful-lights shot.

Daniel Cooney Emerging Photographer Auction

I was asked to submit a piece for the most recent Daniel Cooney Emerging Photographers Auction on iGavel– here is a link to the whole set.  Some really nice work up there.

Wordle

Leslie K. Brown mentioned Wordle in her blog and I immediately wanted to try it out.  I grabbed the entire text of Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and here was my result:

[click to enlarge]

The geeky side of me (um, all of me?) is giddy.

Biennial Shout Out

I was mentioned in a write up on the 2009 Photography Biennial at the Danforth Museum of Art.  I find it really interesting the way someone who has never met me and probably hasn’t seen my artist statement figures out how to describe my work in only one sentence.  Take a look for yourself (picture links to article).

NESOP Stairway Show

I have a show up right now in an unconventional space, the entrance stairway of my alma mater, New England School of Photography.  I really took the opportunity to do something different, showing 15 prints from my Faces series.  Here are a few pictures of the show— it’s hard to photograph a stairway!  Stop by and check it out yourself before the end of the month.

First to Fifty update

You probably thought we had abandoned this pursuit, and even though our lives have gotten so much busier, we’re still at it.  Around the middle we’re both antsy to get at making new work instead of marketing previous work, but I am determined to push through and win.  Steph, you’re gonna owe me some drinks soon!

Yarr!

This is what I’ll be photographing Saturday night.  Pirates, burlesque, and pirate burlesque (and geriatric pirate comedy and bikini-clad pirate rap)—- there’s nothing you could be doing on Saturday night that would convince me you had cooler plans. If you’re in Boston I’d better see you there.

[click for larger flyer]

New England Photography Biennial 2009

Saturday night was the New England Photography Biennial at the Danforth Museum of Art.  The show was beautiful and varied and I am honored to be amongst such great company.  I saw a lot of familiar faces and new ones, too.  I’m posting a few pictures from the show below (though mostly of people looking at my pieces— if you want to see the actual art, get on up to Framingham before November 8th!)

more found writing