Well, this site hasn't been used in a loooong time. But here I am posting for my web design class! It's been about 8 years since I took a web course, so it's been quite the refresher.. I wasn't exposed to vocabulary and things have changed dramatically since I started doing web design back in 2008. Now I use Wordpress for my own site as well.

Launched new site

I just launched my new site! Looking for feedback or suggestions as far as navigation and design. Enjoy!

Web Identity

I've been working on new web identity lately, trying to do a full overhaul of my online identity. These are some of my first sketches.

Cut Copy and Foals

Here are a couple of pics from the Cut Copy and Foals concert at the Granada. Fantastic concert!

500X Expo

One of my pieces, 'Untitled', has been chosen for the 500X EXPO, an exhibition curated by Marty Walker of Marty Walker Gallery. It feels great becoming a part of the Dallas art scene, can't wait to see the exhibition!

500X Gallery Presents:

EXPO 2011
A juried exhibition for artists in Texas
Juror: Marty Walker, Owner, Marty Walker Gallery

February 12-27, 2011
Opening Reception: February 12, 7-10pm

About 500X EXPO

500X Gallery, Texas’ oldest artist-run space, hosts one of North Texas’ most anticipated annual juried competitions. EXPO 2011 is open to all artists over the age of 18 living in Texas. All visual media are eligible, including drawing, painting, sculpture, installation and video.

248 artists entered EXPO, and 45 were selected by juror Marty Walker. Roughly 65 works will be included in the exhibition. Artists included in the exhibition are Jesse Barnett, Julie Barnofski, Michael Blair, Angel Cabrales, Stephanie Clark, Kenneth Collins, Desiree Espada, Cydney Ferguson-Brey, Michael Francis, Anastasia Gabriel, Ricardo Garcia, Danielle Georgiou, Bethany Gouldin, T.J. Griffin, Steve Hamilton, Jessica Hargrave, Fields Harrington, Amy Herzel, Michael Hoefle, Hannah Hudson, Lucy Kirkman, Doughtie Laura, Rosie Lindsey, Sara Lovas, Diane McGurren, Ashley Milow, Frank Mosley, Loughridge Murrell, Kris Pierce, Teresa Rafidi, Jason Reynaga, Ryder Richards, Evett Rolsten, Soyla Santos, Michael Scot, Caroline Sharpless, Lucia Simek, Jonathan Snow, James Michael Starr, Tore Terrasi, Jonathan Whitfill, Timothy Wilson, Trey Wright, Virginia Yount and Sarah Zapata.

Artists in the exhibition are from cities around Texas, including Arlington, Austin, Dallas, Denton, Fort Worth, Houston, Irving, Keller, Llano, Lubbock, Mesquite, North Richland Hills, Princeton, Southlake and Weatherford.

About the Juror

Marty Walker is the owner of Marty Walker Gallery. The gallery is committed to exhibiting contemporary art by mid-career and emerging artists. The gallery’s formal program is focused on inventive use of materials and/or process-oriented works as well as outstanding works in video, photography, sculpture and painting. Marty Walker Gallery collaborates with numerous national and international institutions, museums and galleries to bring dynamic and challenging work to Dallas. In addition, the gallery strives to cultivate awareness and education in contemporary art providing guidance and assistance to private and corporate collections, and welcomes individuals new to collecting art. For more information, visit www.martywalkergallery.com.

'The Specter of Nature' at Spacetaker's ARC Gallery

Well it looks like I'll be having an exhibition in January at Spacetaker's ARC Gallery. I'm excited to present my images to a Houston-based audience. I haven't seen the space yet, but I look forward to viewing it and re-arranging the work to consist of something a little different than my thesis show, perhaps to include some 'sketches' of imagery before the development of my final work.

A little bit about Spacetaker:

Spacetaker is a 501(c)3 professional organization and Artist Resource Center located in Houston’s First Ward whose mission is to provide artists and non-profits access to economic development, continuing education, and networking opportunities to support their professional growth.

If you're an artist or business, you can build a profile on Spacetaker.org for free and may upgrade your membership to include additional perks such as multiple portfolios, artist opportunities, etc.. and it's for a good cause. Keeping the arts alive in Texas.

The show info. is still tentative:

Exhibition to run from January 1-29.
Reception on January 8, 2011 from 5-7pm.

ARC Gallery:
Location: Studio B11 of Winter Street Studios, 2101 Winter Street, Houston, TX 77007
Gallery Hours: Wed - Fri from 11am - 6pm or by appointment. Call 713.868.1839

I'll definitely keep you updated on changes.

Ball Nogues Studio: Feathered Edge

installation view of ‘feathered edge: a new installation by ball-nogues studio’ at MOCA pacific design center, 2009, photo by brian forrest

In response to yesterday's post on Gabriel Dawe's Plexus No. 4, my friend Kaylen Rose sent me this blog post from Design Boom under the e-mail title 'blogs n strings'. An interesting comparison, looks like Ball Nogues Studio's Feathered Edge would offer a different and more airy experience.

Gabriel Dawe at Dallas Contemporary

Plexus No. 4 by Gabriel Dawe

Gabriel Dawe's installation Plexus No. 4 at the Dallas Contemporary has been extended to January 23. One of the more impressive installation exhibits I've visited in the past few years. Gabriel's work with colored string seems to play with our visual perception through the interaction of the colors and the complex construction that moves between varying fields of depth. One exhibit that truly shouldn't be missed.

Dallas Contemporary
161 Glass Street
Dallas, Texas 75207

Gary Schott

eskimo kisser #5 by Gary Schott

I quite like Gary Schott's mechanical playthings. There's a bit of nostalgic whimsy in them, and they make me smile. A couple of his pieces are currently on view in the CraftTexas 2010 exhibit at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, up until Dec. 30. View Gary's portfolio here.

David Sullivan at Lawndale

image from David Sullivan's site

I visited Lawndale Art Center this weekend and one artist that caught my eye was David Sullivan. Sullivan's Fugitive Emissions installation includes three looping videos that explore the relationship between biological matter and the petro-chemical process. The imagery, constantly shifting in focus and forms, offers a visual approach that reflects the amalgamation of chemical sciences with living biology. The animations, created while Sullivan was at A Studio in the Woods, enter an already expansive discourse exploring the post-modern reality of the seen and unseen; questioning how, as a culture, progress and its impact on our very lifestyle can so easily depend on abominations of nature. Fugitive Emissions highlights the complex but not unfamiliar issues surrounding human intervention, through the framework of science, with our natural environment.

Off-Topic: Corpse Flower 'Lois' @ HMNS

Visited the Houston Museum of Natural Science yesterday to view the Corpse Flower 'Lois' who has been getting a surprising amount of buzz around Houston. While we didn't get to see the flower in bloom yet, we did get the opportunity to visit the Cockrell Butterfly Center and I had a fun time with my camera phone. This would be a great place for any new photographer to get some practice with an exotic subject such as the plants and butterflies available here, and the lighting changes throughout the day.

For all you Houstonians, if you would like free tickets into the Cockrell Butterfly Center, you can visit Foursquare.com for a 1st time 'checkin' redemption code for 1 free ticket.

Natalia Almada

While reviewing alums of the Whitney ISP Program, I came across information on Natalia Almada whose work chronicles various family stories along side a contemporary history of Mexican culture. I would love to see her short documentary 'All Water Has a Perfect Memory' about the death of her two year old sister as a child.

You may also find more information on her work at Women Make Movies, with information available about purchase and rental of her films.

Paper In Process

Upon the suggestion of my committee chair I have begun to organize my paper in a different way, by avoiding the screen and experiencing it in a space where all the mandatory points get equal visual coverage through a color coded notecard system. It's already helping... though not sure what people will think when entering my apartment. Still got lots to do.

Teaching Philosophy, what not to do

I've been working on my teaching philosophy lately, getting closer. As I've been looking at other people's philosophies, I came across this one... This is exactly what I don't want my teaching philosophy to sound like. HERE

I want them to entrust me to expand an arts program, not mentally beat down my subordinates.

LOL.... 'kinesthetic knowing'

Letchworth Park

Just a few images from my visit to Letchworth Park a few weeks ago. The batteries to my cameras died really quickly so unfortunately I didn't get very many images in.

Response: Conscientious Blog, Art as Transformative

Joerg Colberg sees photography as transformative art: HERE

Colberg's recent post on this issue is something that we as photographers should always keep in mind. Confoundedly, I have witnessed contemporary work that seems to ignore the transformative nature of the medium (actually, the work doesn't ignore the transformative nature, the artist does). While in this post-post-modernist era our awareness of the image as construction exists, there is often a disconnect between the truth about how this medium can irrevocably change a subject. I have heard many artist discussions which completely ignore the transformative nature all together, some will argue it is about the document, but that characteristic in and of itself is a transformative one, it suggests archives, museums, and evidence; all spaces where a subject becomes still, silent and helpless. I suppose that is the death that Barthes identifies.

NYT Article on Fairey's Obama 'Hope' Poster

via NYT

Oopsey! Looks like Shepard Fairey is in for it with the upcoming court battle over fair-use from the AP photograph he used as a template for creating his Obama 'Hope' Poster. Initially, I had been under the impression that Fairey had used a photograph that had been created to mimic the original image, which would have perhaps given him a stronger case under fair-use, particularly in photography. However, it turns out he lied to the court about where the image originated causing his counsel to withdraw from representing him, not a good sign. To be honest, AP has so much money behind it, the mere thought of a lawsuit from them against any individual is enough to make one shake in their boots. Unfortunately, it looks like Fairey really dug his own grave lying to the court while filing a counter-suit under those false pretenses. Not sure how I feel about this suit, appropriation has been something in the art world for quite some time, Sherry Levine anyone?, I am curious how this is going to pan out.

Are You Happy with the Shape of Your Bikini Wax?

A response to an article I just read:
Are You Happy with the Shape of Your Bikini Wax? by Gloria Feldt

This article got me thinking, because I just read another article on this topic earlier in the week, about how women are more unhappy today than supposedly 'before'. Also, this was written by my second cousin (mother's cousin) so shout out to her too, though the article itself has nothing to do with art, it is focused on the female as consumer, which is totally relevant.

I just turned in the following long-winded comment, but it felt goooood...

The issue of woman as consumer is an issue at the heart of post-modernism and which has become an essential element in much art that came afterwards. This concept of consumerism as identity has been at the heart of the feminist art scene since Cindy Sherman's ‘Film Stills’ and Joan Jonas's 'Organic Honey', both artists were commenting on how the over-saturation of media forced confusing issues of identity onto women. Granted, identity was an issue long before the 70s, however it was the proliferation of media that evolved alongside the feminist movement that created a confusing and even hypocritical dichotomy between the opportunities available for the contemporary woman. One, the opportunity within media, i.e. visual culture, was inevitably reduced to the woman as object, while the opportunities that became available outside of this reduction, such as in the workplace or the home, gave the woman the ability to be something other-than this object. Because of media’s reduction of femaleness to a product of consumerism, women never had the chance to escape that reduction as our culture is completely and irrevocably saturated with imagery; the only way to fight this assumption is to avert our eyes, a precarious proposition.

I don’t think it is that women are unhappy about opportunities they gained through feminism, (as I often read in oblivious commentaries online) I think women are unhappy about media’s transparent position that a woman should still have the same absorption with personal presentation and being an object of sexual desire as she should saving the world.

We are not blind, women are unhappy because the media is propagating a stereotype that no-one wants, a stereotype that suggests that ‘being’ is only skin deep.

Other Artists Represent'n Fashion

via

Well, it looks like Anna Gaskell isn't the only artist on the fashion scene.

A handful of New York artists were chosen to appear in the J. Crew mens catalogue this season, including Ryan McGinness and Vito Acconci. J. Crew's site offers interviews (sort of) and links to the various artists' studios which I must say, upon looking at their spaces, I am quite jealous of.

Any thoughts?

Anna Gaskell in Gap Ad?

Ok, I discovered this ad yesterday while watching ‘The Office’ on hulu, I almost walked out of the room as it ran, and then Anna Gaskell’s name floated across the screen and all I could do was sit dumbfounded at the fact that I was watching the Anna Gaskell sit on a stool and talk about her work; suggesting that her lifestyle as a fine art photographer somehow correlates with the Gap image.

At first, I was just really confused, if you are familiar with Anna's work, a bodysuit of denim just doesn't come to mind when considering her subjects and photographs.

Actually, all her work tends to draw on the dementia of constructions within storytelling, highlighting the plight of female subjects being manipulated and pulled apart by other female characters. Gaskell's photographic series By Proxy investigates the re-imagining of a world as from a mother suffering Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Her Wonder and Override series fragments and reconstructs imagery inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, but by avoiding the literal nature of Carroll’s story, Gaskell’s imagery suggests that one has gone down the ‘rabbit hole’ so to speak and there really is no way out. The settings she chooses often include over-embellished interiors that both suggest and highlight the entrapments of domesticity sickly entwined with the need for story-telling and narcissism. In these spaces the anonymous characters interact through ambiguous scenarios that could be interpreted as either playing with one another, or tearing one another apart; as with an image in which hands are reaching into the frame and tugging at the tights of a little girl. Often using candlelight as her light source within these decorative interiors, Gaskell manages to have a conversation with the past histories of women and domestic space, while considering the contemporary issues of women's plight in motherhood and childhood: both subjects often neglected in contemporary culture where childhood has all but disappeared and motherhood no longer carries the accolades of the past.

Gap's entire image just seems to deny ignore all the investigations that have taken place within Gaskell's photographic work, I just don't get it.

I suppose she looks the part.