First Friday; May

First Friday Artwalk
Richmond, Virginia
May 1, 2009


I usually use this blog to write about my personal feelings and reactions to individual pieces of art at the event I attended. I feel like last First Friday warrants a different kind of post; a post that doesn't deal with the pieces individually, but the Artwalk as a whole.


We visited a gallery or two, but seemed to just be waiting for the highly talked-about May Day Parade. We stood and watched as the liberal college students and community members were led down Broad Street by the police. We were entertained with music, chanting, shopping carts and stilts.



We then went through the usual Artwalk drill. We visited ghostprint, Gallery 5, 1708, Quirk, and all the others up and down Broad Street. I particularly liked how the pieces in the gallery pictured below were tied into the mural on the wall behind. Each piece was related to the others and they all blended well with the wall art. This gallery was also very open and spacious so the large crowd didn't seem overwhelming as it did in other galleries.


The two most anticipated stops we made were naturally the grad work at Five Past One and the senior photography show. We stopped at Five Past One first. I actually really liked this work.


At Five Past One, I may have been initially drawn to John Petrenko's work since he was my teacher last semester, but ended up being drawn to it the most because of context as well. The prints were very big which allowed many details to come out of already detailed shots and the colors were very rich. I have personally always loved texture shots, so his prints really appealed to me.


Morgan and Eric apparently loved Petrenko's work as well. Look at those excited looks!

The Artist.

Finally: The Senior Show. The senior show was decent. The one thing I was a little disappointed in was the fact that I had seen most of this work before, in the hallways of Pollack. I know the artist can't be blamed for that, but I was excited to see the senior's work, and a little dissapointed when I had already seen the majority of the art. This seires, above, is one that I had seen before, but still really enjoyed. The idea of being alone in what is usually a crowded place is very interesting to me, and I feel that his series was very well done. Overall, this first friday was packed with entertainment, that may have overshadowed the art, but fun and inciteful nonetheless.

Senior Show (Craft, Sculpture, KI, Painting)

Overall I thought the MFA Thesis Exhibition of Crafts and Kinetic Imaging was fantastic. I actually liked it a lot better than the Photo/Film/Interior Design one, which is odd for me. This piece to the left was by Jacki Walthers. I enjoyed this piece simply because of it's excellent craftsmanship. It was also visually interesting, made awesome shadows, and has really nice texture on the outside.

This piece to the right was made by Andrew Volpe. I liked this piece, first and foremost because of the vibrant colors that really draw you into the piece. I also really like the tessalations feel. It's been a long time since I've seen an effective tessellations piece and I really enjoyed this one.

Meg Roberts had a few pieces in the show that I really loved. This first piece was amazing because of how interactive it was. Everyone walking by was drawn to it and there was a diagram on the wall telling you how to act around the project, so people were constantly following the instruction panel.

This was another piece I really enjoyed. This was made by Meghan Resler. This whole piece was made by teabags. I don't have much to say about it, except that it's very creative and well-crafted. There were actually a number of other piece from the show that I really enjoyed, but this selection of photos and writings sums up the show pretty well.

MFA Thesis Exhibitions at Anderson

Honestly, there wasn't too much at Anderson that really blew me away, I would like to talk about a few creative pieces though.


The first pieces I want to write about were video pieces by Ryan Gothrup. When I saw them at the opening, I was unimpressed. I didn't spend much time watching them because of the crowds and because I didn't have very long before the gallery closed. When I went back the following Monday, I loved these pieces.

The first one was a baseball piece. You saw a guy in his living room hitting baseballs... and naturally they were smashing up the area. It was mixed with so many clips of actual professional baseball games that you didn't have time to think about where the baseballs were being thrown from. I assumed he had a machine throwing them outside the camera's view. After a while, however, the secret is revealed. The whole "living room" was just a set created in the middle of a baseball field and there was an actual pitcher throwing balls through the door from the pitcher's mound. Seeing the secret at the end made it so much more interesting.

The other piece Ryan Gothrup made was a basketball piece. You saw an athlete shooting basketball after basketball into the hoop at a park. Randomly... some basketballs would shatter! You realized some of them were real rubber basketballs and some of them were made from glass, but looked indentical. After watching this for a while, it got old. Really old. Then this random man comes up and starts screaming at the athlete. He apparently works at or near the park where this was being filmed and was furious they were breaking glass on the black-top where kids play. The cameras suddenly split into four camera angles and show a good ten minutes of screaming between artists and angry neighbors. The neighbors say they are calling the cops, start mocking the actions of the artists, and then it stops... you never find out the ending. This piece would have been only mediocre without the brawl in the latter half. But with it, it was a suspenseful, intense thrill to watch.


^ The other piece I liked was a cross between a sculpture piece and a photography piece. It was a clear mask they made over the faces of lots of different kinds of people. The size of the printing was really great and the amount of prints was as well. I really enjoyed just looking at the differents in these people, but how similar their expressions are because of the mask.

Hassan's Work

When I saw your piece at the opening, it was scary and overwhelming. I could hear the dramatic music, so loud the floor was vibrating, from down the hall. It was a great way to draw us into the room, but creepy all the same. When I watched it in the packed room or people constantly talking or moving, all I really got from it was a feeling of sharing a very personal moment with you, while you maintained a piercing stare with the audience. I was a little uncomfortable with the stare and that's all I could really focus on. A few days later, on Monday, I went back to Anderson. I felt like I hadn't really seen all I could have from that gallery during the opening because of all the people. I went back and saw your piece again and got a completely different feeling. It was hot in that room, I mean really humid, making it feel like the bathroom after a shower. When watching it the second time, I felt like you were really brave for exposing your true self to the audience. From this viewing, I got the sense of humbling oneself and bringing yourself down to the basics; showing your true colors. You shaved your whole head and everything the camera could see, took out all your piercings, and sat their humbled and vulnerable at the end. The stare was suddenly an honest reflection instead of a scary element. I really enjoyed going back to watch it the second time and learned a lesson about art viewing at openings.

Anderson Gallery: Student Juried Show

I went to see the Anderson Gallery's Student Show a few days ago with Amber and Morgan. To be honest, it was only decent in my opinion. It was a lot of AFO work that looked like AFO work. I feel hypocritical when I have to critique piece that were mostly craft and sculpture considering I have zero skills in those departments, but most of the piece just didn't seem to interest me.

There were a few pieces I enjoyed that I quietly took pictures of while no one was looking (The Anderson Gallery workers have been clear to me in the past that I should put my camera away.)

I really enjoyed this photo piece. It showed the texture of smells. The pictures were all creative and compositionally intersting.



This is Amber's piece. Not only do I like it, but I'm totally biased. So I won't talk about it, I'll just post the picture :) Yay Amber, Congrats.













I also really liked this piece. It was simple, creative, and just visually intersting. I don't have much more to say about it than that.

Shows/Contests Entered

The first photos I entered were to the Land/Sea/Air Student Photography Competition. I sent in digital files for their contest along with this entry form. All the paperwork I received in return was a confirmation email.

I also submitted three pieces to the Anderson Gallery Student Show. Here's one of the three entry forms minus personal contact information.

Artist Resume

I removed the personal and contact information, since this is being posted for everyone to see. It is of course included in the actual document.

Contact Information


Personal Information


Art Related Experience

Freelance Sports Photographer
Various Dates since Summer 2003
Photographed youth recreational sports baseball and swim teams for keepsakes for parents and athletes.

On Call Photographer
VCU Communications Office
Richmond, Virginia
February 2008- Present
Photograph various VCU events, buildings, and areas of Richmond for posters, brochures, and other publications through the Sitterding House. Also, keep up the image library’s organization and editing.

Education

Graduated with an Advanced Diploma and 3.89 High School GPA from Deep Run High School in Glen Allen, Virginia in 2007.
Currently attend VCU Arts in Richmond. Enrolled in the photography department with a 3.25 College GPA and am seeking a photography BFA with a Media Studies Minor.

Awards/ Accomplishments

High School Accomplishments
High school yearbook editor for four years.
Part of three honor societies in high school.

Dance
Competed and won many regional and national awards in tap, jazz, ballet, and hip-hop with Barabara Hammond’s School of Dance as well as Regency Dance Academy, both in Richmond, Virginia.
Was a part of two NYC Off-Broadway Productions: TapKids by Lisa Hopkins as well as Slide by Mike Minery and Gil Stromming.

Published in the Richmond- Times Dispatch
Shots of a house fire I took published in the Times-Dispatch Metro Section in January 2008. Published in the actual newspaper as well as in three online articles.

Computer/Language Skills

Knowledge in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Bridge, Adobe Flash, Adobe Illustator, Adobe InDesign, Pagemaker, Ulead Video Studios, and YBPro.
Mediocre ability to speak and understand Spanish. I have six years of Spanish classes under my belt and can understand and communicate, but am in no way fluent.

Cameras/ Equipment

Familiar with Canon and Panasonic Products.
Own digital cameras of both brands and also a Pentax film camera.
Two additional lenses for the canon
Familiar with Mac Programs

Artist Statement

At this point in my photography career, I don't think I really have any idea what I want to focus on. I know my style is commercial and I think I could work well with a newspaper of advertising firm shooting commercial photos for articles or ads. I really enjoy shooting sports photography as well which also reflects my commercial style when looking for a crisp, action photo. My work also tends to be close in, tightly cropped shots. These characteristics show my personal style, but as of now that's all I have as far as a personal artist statement.

SameTime 1:04

As you probably know by now, I am one of the four members involved in SameTime 1:04, a spin off/continuation of Michael Lease's SameTime 7:15. I try to keep up with all the other blogs from our class, and have read everyone else's "sametime" entries. Sometimes it's hard to read harsh critisim from classmates, but it will benefit the sametimers in the long run.

At the beginning, I was so excited to partake in this project. Amber and I sat down in Shafer the day after Michael showed us his website and talked about how simple the project was yet how drawn we were to it. We sat in Shafer for four hours discussing if he would be offended if we did it ourselves, more as a personal experiment than an art project for others to view, but Michael was the one who encouraged us to make a blog so people could keep up with it. We pulled in two of our friends, wrote out some rules to keep it consistent, and started our "practice" posts in December to make sure we got used to taking a picture everday.

The first posts were exciting to us personally. We refreshed the page a thousand times to see when the others finally posted. I did at least anyway... The pictures were decent, but the exciting part was that we were all taking the photos at the same time everyday yet they were so different. It was amazing, especially at the beginning, to realize we were all doing something together. The most interesting part to me, personally, is that I've never even met Ben. We post together everyday and I've learned just as much about him as our other followers, but we've never even spoken face-to-face. Another aspect of this project that amazes me is the amount of viewers we have. Not only do we have 20-some "followers" on the blog, but we have a facebook group for sametime 1:04 with over a hundred members and we all have people that have emailed to tell us they love it and check everyday. A girl I've never met named Shelley, told me that she checks everyday and she's not sure why considering she's never met any of us. But she loves seeing what we've done that day.

Over the past months, I feel like the pictures have gotten better. They went from simple documentation to documentation in a more creative way. I feel like this project has made us all grow and the fact that we have to include a caption gives us an even more creative hand in how we portray our 1:04 activity. The one aspect of the project that frustrates me is the posting rate. I feel like we were all very dedicated to posting our picture the same day we took it at the beginning, but as time has gone on, we've started slacking. Especially with all the people that actually update themselves everyday, I feel like we're letting them down if we don't post on time. I really wanna work on that. I appriciate the feedback we're getting on the project from other photographers since you assigned this blog entry... thanks; we love hearing what other people suggest about the experiment.

Anderson Gallery

The Anderson Gallery has a show up right now called "Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba Art: Featuring the Bernard and Patricia Wagner Collection" which is comprised of African and Nigerian art.




The exhibit was mostly comprised of carvings and masks made by the natives of the specific countries involved. These, to me, were interesting at first, but didn't keep my attention. I did like how they would show the carvings/statues/mask and then have a picture printed of how it was actually worn/used in that country. I like seeing it on the person better than in a case. Some of the carvings were really intricate and detailed, though, which impresses me since there's no way I could do such a thing.



By far, my favorite part of the gallery was the room with wall to wall beaded prayer pouches on panels. The room was overwhelming. The colors and varieties in shapes and sizes were awesome to see on such a big scale. When Morgan and I were looking at them up close, we didn't understand at first. We complained about the use of glitter and the bad stitching and tried to find something to read about the display and once we did, I really fell in love with it. I didn't realize at first that these pouches were from people of all ages and each contained a specific wish or prayer on a piece of paper. I loved that the project was so hands-on and collaborative and involved so many people of different ages. It made me want to study each beaded prayer pouch individually.

The photos on this post were taken by me.

Harrison Street Coffee Shop

"Best of 2008 Photo Show"
February 18. 2009

Amber, Morgan, and I made a visit to the Harrison Street Coffee Shop's Show today. It was nice to get out o the rainy, disgusting weather and look at a display of nothing but photography for once.

It was nice to see a show made of just photography, but the setup made it pretty difficult to take it in. I know it's in a cafe, but regardless, it's difficult to look in depth at the photos when people are sitting at the tables. I did really enjoy the writing under each photo though, I liked being provided with the websites of the artists and being able to see an example of lots of artist work in one place. I also liked reading their descriptions.

This was my favorite photo from the exhibit. It is called "Paper Boats" taken by Cameron Charles Lewis. The colors are fantastic; they're relatively similar, but stand out on their own really well. The description of this photo dealt with parting with your childhood. It's a very touching photo that I find very calming.

There were a couple of others in the show I really enjoyed, but the ones that stick out in my mind are the ones that bothered me. I don't want feel it's right to negatively critique the artists since I've only seen one piece of their work, so I won't mention their names, I'll only mention their pieces. I was really bothered by one called "Anon." It was a nice sized print and the concept about not knowing the figure's identity because his face wasn't shown was interesting to me, but I still didn't like the print. It was way too dark and there was no point of focus, and it just really got on my nerves. I was also bothered by "Death be a lady." It was a typical fashion shot with standard fashion lighting where the woman was holding a gun (but it was so dark it was hard to notice the gun.) When it originally ran as an ad for a makeup company the ad read something like "Call # for a good time and we'll shoot you." It was just corny and standard and irritated me. Overall, it was nice to see some good photos, but difficult to take in because of the setting.

The first two photos in this entry were taken by myself, but the third was taken from Lewis' website: http://flickr.com/photos/cameroncharles/

First Friday Artwalk

February 6th, 2009

Well, this First Friday started out at 1708.

The pieces at 1708 at the time are from Nichole Maury and Christopher Quirk. The pieces were quite different, but seemed to fit together nicely in the space.

Christopher Quirk's pieces were gory looking pieces. They were mostly gray, tilted canvases with built up oil and acrylic paint that was mostly in bodily colored tones (peach, red, purple). They were relatively large pieces which was a nice contrast to the long walls in the gallery and the smaller pieces by Nichole Maury.

( That's Amber... )

Nichole Maury's work was all similar to the piece on the right. Most of them were made up of screenprints and carbon transfer's with some sort of array of little geometric shapes (sometimes circles and sometimes rectangles.) My favorite piece of hers was "An Array of Plausible Perspectives #10" where there were three pieces similar to this one >
but they seemed to form a continuous wave of boxes over three separate works.

Next stop for the group was Quirk. I never understood what people would say in class about not going to Quirk on First Friday... but now I do. It was packed and in that tight space it made it very difficult to see the art. The first piece that really caught my eye were three little sculptures by Jessica Martinkosky. They were three ceramic, green, skeleton looking heads in a glass case and they really intrigued me. They had a personality about them and made me want to hold them. Unfortunately I couldn't snap a picture without the whole world seeing me...







Another piece that caught my attention (obviously, considering it took up a whole wall) were the dark green, ceramic sculptures on the wall by Hyun Kyung Yoon. This piece was hard to miss, but what really interested me about them were the long shadows they made on the walls... this picture doesn't do it justice.








The last piece I want to talk about from Quirk was made by Elizabeth Kendall. As you can tell, her sculpture protrudes from the wall and takes up a considerable amount of space. I love the way each part is layered and reminded me instantly of a piece a fellow AFO student did last year (Alyson Aversa.) I love the shadows that are made on the wall from this piece. Also, the simplicity of the black and ivory colors kept it simple and drew my into the work.




^ Next Stop ^


The work here was all pretty similar. They were very watercoloreqsue pieces, but I think they were prints, not watercolors. I really loved the colors and the composition in the piece to the right. I love the texture in the ripple and the texture in the tree bark from other pieces. What interested me the most about this work was the mixed reaction from my group of friends. The "art school" kids seemed to be pretty turned off by this work. I'm not sure why, but they just didn't care for it. On the other hand, the two students that were with us that don't attend art school loved this work- it was their favorite work from the night. They loved the colors and the simplicity and I think they loved that they didn't have to think about it too hard, it is what it is. People's reactions and explanations of their reactions interest me more than the art sometimes...






From what I could gather, Art6 was comprised of the works of Todd Hale. The first thing I noticed when I went upstairs is that I saw the first photographs I had seen all night. In the corner of this narrow hallway was a photo I really loved. It was called Miami and was pretty much split down the center- clouds on the left and building on the right. Sounds boring, but the tonality of whites, blacks, and greys in the clouds were really beautiful and the angle and perspective were really nice to look at. This piece to the left reminded my of coral or some sort of underwater scene. I love the size and length of the panel and the way the bright pink acrylic catches the light.




The rest of Todd Hale's work got a little disturbing. There were a lot of skeletal models and skeleton charcoal sketches on the wall in addition to paint drips and all sorts of paintings that resembled organs and tissues of the body. They were very interesting in a strange way. We also stopped by Art6 East, but I don't have much of a reaction to it so I'll just skip to the next gallery.



We now arrive at Ghost Print Gallery. I have other pictures from this gallery, but it was so packed in there they aren't even worth posting. Most of the paintings and other canvas pieces in Ghost Print really didn't interest me. The pieces were odd, graphic pieces with sketches and paint together and just did nothing for me. I was interested in the painting of the newspaper boxes that was taking place throughout and even outside the gallery. The designs on the newspaper boxes were bright and unique and I would love to go get a paper off the street from a box looking like that.




Now we're at ADA Gallery.



I loved this piece to the left by Eric Sall. It was gigantic and basically a mess of organized chaos. The colors were vibrant and amazing and I loved the texture of the built up paint.




A really interesting aspect of ADA was the "Blackhole Theatre" in the back of the gallery. It literally was like a black hole in the back where some video art was being shown. The main screen showed an interesting and humourous little narrative. A man created little horses, scenes, and figures out of cloth and wire and made them move like someone would when playing with action figures. He had the horses tied to a string and would pull them along and then he created a little trapeese bar apparatis for the figures to do a gymnastics routine. It was clever and funny and had a unique perspective because he didn't hide anything from the viewer. We saw how the figures were pushed or pulled and we saw him sitting there being the puppet master and making his own sound effects in addition to the background music he used.


In addition to all the art we saw at First Friday, we definitely took in a big dose of Richmond culture. Between the street corner bands, vendors, giant cat people, evangelicals, and lobbyists for various Richmond causes... the spirit of First Friday was alive and well.


As typical photo majors, we finished up the Artwalk with a group picture (minus myself.)


The photos from this blog entry are personal photos that I took that night.

Alix Pearlstein

Alix's work was comprised of video art from the years 2000-2007. She liked to use simple backgrounds like open white or black spaces to focus on the action. In her words she likes to explore the concept of films stripped of context and locations. Her first pieces had handheld cameras that would surround the actors and were obviously shaking and unsteady. Most of her films had voice-overs of loud voices or sounds (ex: grunting, moaning, footsteps, etc) instead of normal dialogue.

The first film short we watched was called "Two Women"and focused on the illusion of a magazine cut-out of a naked woman being fondled by a shirtless, skinny man. There were commands being said by Alix's voice-over and stock sounds and the man followed the instructions of the voices. The camera, as I mentioned beore, was obviously handheld and gave you an uncomfortable and uneasy feeling.


Another theme portrayed in Alix's films is the destruction of the hierarchy and the destruction of family. The hierarchy was disassembled in "Forsaken" where the son is this authority figure who gets waited upon and whose portrait is hung up on display.




Eventually the mother is the one you brings him off his high horse and then he is brutally attacked and left on the ground with the mother's cackling laughter ringing in the ears of the audience.


In general, I found Alix's work a little over my head. I loved her concepts and when I heard her explain her intent, it all made sense to me. But I personally prefer a more conventional take to these concepts and her work just wasn't for me. Her intent was good and I think may have appealed to certain audiences perfectly, but it didn't appeal to me personally.

Photos for this post were taken from Alix Pearlstein's website. http://www.alixpearlstein.com/