Alternative Workshop: Encaustics Photography

Alternative Workshop: Final

 

iPhone 4s pinhole stopmotion

Photographers: Benaiah Gagne, Abram Gagne, Karen Mawikere

Music by: Rilo Kiley

Artist Lecture: Joo Lee Kang

Image source: www.jooleekang.blogspot.com

I was interested in Joo Lee Kang ‘s work because I thought it was really neat that the only thing she used in her art (at least the ones that are in the museum) is ballpoint pens. She started her presentation by telling her audience about her inspirations for the art that’s hanging up and how she began drawing in her certain style.

She conducts a lot of research for her drawings of animals because she wants them to be accurate, but she uses these studies to turn them in surrealist scenes that show the interaction between the creatures and the plants. She also likes to incorporate the human to have an interaction with the scenes, which is the reason she prints these images large so it feels like the scenes are life-size. I think it’s neat that even though she does practice drawings through researching her creatures, she still adds her own style by turning her creatures into characters in her art big drawings and sets them in different poses.

Joo Lee told us that she likes to draw with ballpoint pens because that’s the utensil she normally has on her. The ballpoint pen is also easy to transport so she can take it around anywhere she goes. She enjoys the “grayness” it holds which makes it easy for her to build up her value through more and more layers, as opposed to hard charcoal where adding layers isn’t as subtle. If it’s not a ballpoint pen that she has on her, she uses pencils or highlighters or really anything. I liked that she shared this with us because it gave us an insight into her personal preferences for how she works and she didn’t try to cover up that the ballpoint pen drawings was just something she did in her daily life and it worked out for the kinds of drawings she wanted to do.

One thing that I thought was interesting was when she said that she always needs to be at the gallery when they are installing for an exhibition of her work. She wants to be able to have a say in how people experience her work, and there is no set blue print that fits all museums. For example, the UNH MoA has a big window at the entrance so when people walk by, they have a straight-shot view of what’s going on at one specific part of the balcony wall. For this reason, she chose to hang up her 3-D installation of practice sketches so that it catches the viewers’ eyes as soon as they walk by the entrance.

After listening to her talk, I was a little disappointed to know that some of her pieces were scanned in and then printed larger because I was really intrigued at first at how someone can make a big pen drawing so perfectly with no mistakes. I also wished that the wallpaper was all hand-drawn even though I know it would have taken forever.

Artist Lecture: Kyle Saver

Image source: www.kylestaver.com

I know you’re not supposed to judge something by its cover, but that’s exactly what I did going into Kyle Staver’s talk. I saw the posters around the PCAC that announced her talk and I wasn’t really interested just by looking at the photograph of her painting that was on the poster.

She began her presentation with an “artist statement”-- it’s not really an artist statement but it is the writing piece that she submitted in her application for a grant. The statement was not talking about her work, but rather talked about what painting meant to her. I thought it was a good way to start because the fact that she didn’t write an artist statement like she was supposed to made me interested in her personality.

The slideshows she had up were not in chronological order, nor were they grouped into series, which was a little bit confusing. When people asked her about her work, I liked that she took some time to think about her answers and gave us a raw response, meaning it did not sound like she rehearsed it 500 times. She seemed scatter-brained, which put me at ease because I’m pretty scatter-brained myself when it comes to talking about my work-- and still, UNH faculty invited her to come speak.

Throughout the talk, I became more interested about her process as a painter and about her personality, and those two things together made her paintings more interesting to me.

Artist Lecture: Eric Adjetey Anang

Image source: www.ghanacoffin.com

Going into this talk, I was interested to find out what exactly this person did. I had heard that he was a “fantasy coffin maker”, but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure as to what that meant. Regardless, I wanted to find out more.

Eric started his presentation with a video that someone made about his work. I thought this was a good way to hook the audience into the talk because generally people are more interested in watching videos rather than listening to a talk. He continued with the rest of his presentation with a slideshow of his work, organized chronologically. His first slideshows showed us the history of his business to help us understand how he got into the business that he’s in today.

I enjoyed the fact that he told the audience the difference between coffins that he makes for people in Ghana and the fantasy coffins that he made usually for people outside of his home country. He explained that “fantasy coffins” are ones that are in the shape of beer bottles, soda cans, and candy bars-- ones that are intended to be “fun”, not to be shown in a burial ceremony. But Eric primarily builds coffins that symbolize a great aspect of the deceased’s life: a chicken with chicks representing a mother with many children, a fish representing a person’s influence in the market, a hammer representing a carpenter, etc. These non-traditional shapes would not fall under the idea of fantasy because they are meaningful to the family of the deceased and are symbolic to that person’s life.

I also connected with the latter end of the slideshow because he told us that he really tries to make his way into school systems so that children would be able to expand their career options by seeing what he does for a living. Being in the art education program here at UNH, it was nice to hear what someone outside of this country thought about educating children in the arts.

At the end of the talk, I wanted to see all of his coffins in person especially since the art he makes is life-size (obviously). It’s crazier to think that he doesn’t plan out his work the way most woodworkers do around here. Rather, he just eyeballs and works on the vision inside his head.

Alternative Workshop: Salt Prints

Alternative Workshop: Cyanotypes

Shot with iPhone 4s.

Printed on stonehenge paper.

Alternative Workshop: Cyanotype Class Amalgamations

a very handsome class.

oops, lost a shoulder.

Alternative Workshop: Cliché Verre (homework)

paper.

Alternative Workshop: Scanner as Camera

The following images were taken by using the scanner as the camera. I wanted to scan these at a higher dpi than 72, but it was nearly impossible to get the images to come out the way I wanted to because my body and the scanner objects could not stay still for the 3-minute scanner exposure.

Alternative Workshop: Cliché Verre (in-class)

The final production of the ARTS651 collaboration cliché verre.

Artist Talk: Ed Kashi, photographer

http://www.edkashi.com/

Ed Kashi is a photojournalist and a filmmaker. He is passionate about the social and political issues of the world today, which drives him to document around the world. During his presentation, he showed a few short films along with still images from his trips. The most fascinating to me was the Nicaragua photo essay. As he explored the conditions of the cotton fields, I was amazed at how many people were open to letting him photograph, especially since death was a common occurrence in their home. Ed had mentioned that with the spread of disease, there was a funeral just about every day in that town. The images and descriptions of the harsh environments of the cotton fields were very emotional. He does a very good job capturing the people’s emotions, and I also liked it because it reminds me of what I try to do in my own work, but don’t always necessarily achieve. Without the help of text, Ed’s photographs clearly tell a story, but I feel that when they are placed along with Ed’s captions, they become much more enhanced. There was a section in his presentation where he talked a little bit about his family. He had mentioned that because of all his travels, he has pretty much missed half of his daughter’s life, and his wife is was basically been a single mother for that time. He said that he doesn’t take that lightly, but I question this slightly. I’m not quite sure how I feel about artists leaving their family for the sake of art. I think that this deters the artists’ families away from the appreciation of art. I know for myself, that if my mother or father decided to disappear in order to make art, I would just become bitter and I would learn to not appreciate art. Because I started to get thinking about Ed’s family, I would like to see him do a photojournal or short film on his family.

Anderson Ranch Arts Center - August 12, 2014

Artist Talk: David Ellsworth, woodturner

http://www.ellsworthstudios.com/blackpots.html

David Ellsworth’s first woodshop class was about 55 years ago, and he has been working with wood ever since. I really liked that during the talk, he explained the evolution of his work: At first, he mentioned that he was really interested in ceramics, and wanted to incorporate that into his woodwork. This got him to start using the lathe, with which he began making hollow forms, such as bowls, vases, and pots. He later became fascinated with Native American ceramics, which led to the experimentation of wood textures in his work. After finding out that each texture had a different effect on the pieces he was making, he tried out each one that he could get his hands on. He also discovered the importance of color in his pieces, which drove him to his Black Pots series. The contrast between the light and dark colors in this series, combined with the textured lines that cover the hollow forms really gives body and shape to his work. He also started to incorporate little fragments of wood into his work, where he would take a tiny piece of wood and put it on a piece or cover just part of it, which I thought was different, but impressive because even though it was technically out of place, the fragments looked like they belonged to the final piece. The fragments then led to bigger pieces that actually looked like pots made out of fragments of wood; This would be the Solstice Series. The shapes were so irregular, but the patterns that he puts into his piece brings the individual pieces together, let alone the entire series. Overall, I was really impressed with his work. I know how hard it is to make bowls out of clay, but I could only imagine how much harder they would be when they are made out of wood. The fact that he makes so many of them, and makes them all look flawless is also very admirable.

Anderson Ranch Arts Center - August 12, 2014

Artist Talk: Emilio Perez, painter

“When I go into a piece of work, I don’t worry about what it’s going to look like.

Because whatever I end up with is going to look like Emilio.”

http://emilioperezart.com/

Emilio Perez is an artist of many mediums, but is mostly known for his paintings. He works mainly with abstract paintings because he does not go about his process in the “typical” way an artist goes about his work, in the way that he does not have a specific theme or goal he wants to achieve at the end of his paintings. He does not work with a preconceived concept in his mind, but rather paints for the sake of painting. So the way he starts off his paintings is not with a sketch, but rather with the paint itself, which I thought was really interesting. I think many artists today try too hard to find a concept to work on that the art of the process begins to get lost, so I appreciate that Emelio does not do this and admits that. Once he gets the paint onto his surface, he then finds drawings within the splashes of color he created, so he starts to draw on the surface as long as the medium he used was thin, such as watercolors. When it comes to thick media such as oil paint, he waits for the paintings to dry, then uses a carving tool to cut lines into his paintings. Because of the sharp objects he uses against the surface, he only paints on wood in order to withhold the sharpness of the blade. Another method of painting that evolved from this is painting onto a surface, scraping away the entire painting so that all that is left is the tints of color, painting over it with white, then scraping off the white surface to reveal the color that lies behind the white, sort of like an encaustic painting. I have been to an encaustic workshop once, but I never would have thought to try it with oil paint, although I imagine it would get very expensive. Another thing I liked about Emilio’s art is that they are always large. He wants the viewer to have an intimate experience with his work, and I think large is an effective choice because of all the intricate lines he places on his work. A trait that I also thought was admirable was the fact that he is spontaneous when it comes to his paintings. He doesn’t get caught up with making sure he gets a certain image. He said, “When I go into a piece of work, I don’t worry about what it’s going to look like. Because whatever I end up with is going to look like Emilio.”

Anderson Ranch Arts Center - August 10, 2014

Alternative Workshop: About Me

Who I Am

What I looked like as a child (Note: you are still legally a child when you are 17 years old).

My main character trait.

What inspires me most.

What I normally take pictures of.

What I love about photography.

What I'd be doing if I weren't a photographer (eating cookie dough).

The first thing I touch in the morning.

A favorite photograph.

A secret about me.

The meaning of life.

Alternative Workshop: Memory

What moment from your life do you most wish you had a photograph of?

This is going to sound pretty cruel, but I wish I had photographs of the time I moved out of my house through DCYF. Everything happened so fast that it's hard to process what happened that weekend. I've been wanting to do a series to try to recreate the moments: the tension, the emotion, the fear, but haven't really been able to figure out a way to do so. The reason why no photograph exists is because one, my parents would have flipped out, and two, it's not a very appropriate time to pull out a camera when there are police officers talking to your parents. One of the only indirect photographs I have of that period in my life is this, taken with my old cellphone: