McKnight Fellowship Talks

Over the last two Thursday evenings I have attended the talks given by the current holders of the McKnight Fellowship for Photography.

In the past, the Fellowship exhibition and talk came two years after the Fellowship had been awarded, even though the Fellowship only lasted a year. In the future, the Fellows will exhibit their work and talk about it at the end for the Fellowship year, which is much more appropriate.

Scott Stulen from mnartists.org

This year, the new organizers (mnartists.org) decided to hold two simultaneous shows and talks so that they could catch up. That means that there were eight artists giving their talks this year instead of the usual four. The Walker hosted these talks over the past two Thursdays.

Out of all eight artists, I found Paul Shambroom’s recent work the most intriguing. I was a big fan of his Meetings series from a few years ago. He has always had a political twist to his work, which I think is why I am drawn to it. However, what was of particular interest to me was how he researched his current project (Shrines) and how similar it was to what I had done for Technically Intimate. Paul was searching for pieces of military technology that had been bought and placed in public spaces. These were done mostly as memorials. He was interested in the idea of using a weapon of destruction as a memorial to those who had died in war, as a result of weapons very similar to those that were memorializing them.

Paul Shambroom

Understandably, he did not want to drive all over the country searching for interesting sites to photograph. So he used the vast resource that is the Internet. He would search on Flickr for photos that had been taken of military memorials. He would then use Google Earth to check out the site before he visited. He also used Google Earth to map out all of the locations for possible photos.

Paul Shambroom

What is interesting to me, both with Paul’s research and my own, is that a vast majority of the project is actually research done online, then a small part of the project is the actual shooting, followed by some post production and printing. Without the Internet, my own work would not be possible (because my subject matter would not exist) and Paul’s would have been much more difficult to have made.

The current exhibitions of McKnight Fellows include: Paul Shambroom, Lex Thomson, Carrie Thomson, Monica Haller, Chuck Avery, Amy Eckert, Gina Dabrowski, and Karl Raschke. The exhibits are being held at Midway Contemporary Art and Franklin Art Works and are up until July 24^th.

Gina Dabrowski

Chuck Avery

Lex Thomson

Paul Shambroom

Paul Shambroom

Paul Shambroom

Paul Shambroom

Paul Shambroom

Paul Shambroom

Time for questions

Scott Stulen from mnartists.org

Karl Raschke

Karl Raschke

Monica Haller

Carrie Thomson

More questions

2010 Catalog

2009 Catalog

Neural Magazine is out now.

A while back I did an interview with Alessandro Ludovico about my Illuminati and Technically Intimate series for the Italian magazine Neural. That interview appears in the Multiplied Identities issue, which is on sale now. The magazine deals primarily with technology based/related art. I was pleasently surprised to find my image Megan from the Technically Intimate series on the cover. The magazine (or subscriptions) can be purchased here. Or if you just want to go and take a look at it, here is the international list of the places (magazine shops and libraries) that carry it. Enjoy!

Virtual Identities at the Strozzina

Images of the Virtual Identities show are up at the Strozzina are up. I have six pieces from the Illuminati series in the show. You can see my whole little page, as well as all the other artists in the show, on their website here. Photos from the catalog are here.

Postcards from John and Julie

As a follow up to the last post, John and Julie were kind enough to send me some of the postcards from the project they had mentioned to me while visiting. These aren’t just any postcards, but palladium prints. They are really nice little objects. You almost feel bad writing on them.

Here’s a little about the project:

We started the postcard portrait project in July 2008by photographing random visitors to our downtown Manitowoc studio. The people who visited were most often students or other artists passing through the area and usually clad in t-shirts and jeans, which gave the portraits a casual off-the street quality.

More can be seen on their blog.

Visit from John and Julie

I got a visit last Friday from John Shimon and Julie Lindemann, art professors at Lawrence University. They came to look and talk about the work I had been making over the last couple of years. I am hoping to be able to head up to Lawrence sometime in the near future to talk about my work with the students there. They were kind enough to bring me a book they had produced in conjunction with the Milwaukee Art Museum. The book contains portraiture from a variety of artists including John and Julie. I thought I would share a few of the pages here. Enjoy.

Barcelona + Pyrenees + Polaroid 180

I got back from Barcelona last week. It was a great trip, especially since it was just time to enjoy, as opposed to having to go to an opening or do any sort of work. And I got to take my Polaroid 180 with. I had taken both color and B+W film, but had problems with getting the B+W to work correctly. So I just shot up all of the color that I had. This is a small selection of what was shot, at least the images I like the most. And while it is a pain to deal with peel-a-part pack film while on vacation, they are so beautiful I think it was worth it.

P.S. Fuji really has their act together when it comes to color Polaroid (Fujiroid?) film.

Virtual Identities Catalog

I just received the catalog for the Virtual Identities show that is currently on display at the Strozzina in Florence. My image of Katie was used for the postcard / invite and my image of Lila was used for the cover of the catalog. There is a lot of text in the catalog, and I was really pleased with the description of my work in the catalog. Plus, they sent me a bunch of copies, which are really nice to have for the future.

Marie Claire

The South African edition of Marie Claire picked up the New York Magazine story from February. They did things a little different with the images. Here’s how it turned out.

MSP Best of Issue

Unbeknown to me, I was in the Best of issue of MSP magazine. It was in a roundabout way, but any publicity is good. They did a feature on MN Original and decided to use an image from my episode. Spelled my name wrong, but whatever.

Off to Barcelona

Film, Film, and Film

Well, I am off to Barcelona today. Won’t be back until June 6th. I will be taking along my Polaroid camera as well as a couple of Super 8s. While they make great imagery, unfortunately for my suitcase, the film takes up a lot of room. This will be the first time that I am trying the B+W Fuji, so I am interested in what it will look like. It’s ISO 3000 and supposedly only takes 15 seconds to develop (as opposed to the 75 for the color). And I’ll only end up with about 200 images. Just hoping I have enough to make it through!