Paul Shambroom Lecture

      Out of all the artist lectures I've been to, I enjoyed the Paul Shambroom lecture the most. He made the lecture very enjoyable by being humorous and lively, so I didn't find myself completely bored, like I have with other artists. 

      I think I preferred his nuclear weapons photographs the most out of all his different series, probably because of the importance of the subject in todays world. His photographs were nice, but not all of them were that visually appealing, but he did say that he just took straight photographs instead of trying to enhance the image with composition. I also just prefer black and white images to color. 

I also appreciated the fact that he kept his politics out of his photography. When shooting things like nuclear weapons and subjects having to do with homeland security, it would be easy to let your opinion influence work, since you are shooting such politically charged issues. i hate it when artists get political, because it can alienate people people form your work and a lot of artists don't know what they're talking about and end up looking like idiots because of their work.  So i was glad that he made the conscious decision to leave his political opinions out of his work.

Rumors show

I just saw that when I thought I had posted this a couple of weeks ago it did not work, so here it is:

Overall I thought the show at Rumors on Saturday was okay. The atmosphere of the store was cool, but I don't know if it was the best place to hold a photography show. The other things in the store were kind of distracting. I wasn't sure what was a part of the art show or what was a part of the store and hanging up all the time, so it was a bit difficult to find the next set of photographs to look at. Each artist had their own unique way of presenting their work, which i though was cool, but some ways were more successful than others. the one exhibit where the photos were hanging from  clothes hangers was an interesting idea, but you had to keep turning the photos towards you to be able to get a good look at them. I thought the least successful presentation, was the photos on the balcony. having them them surrounded by different colored boxes was distracting and made it hard to concentrate on the photos. i think if the photographs were surrounded by less vibrant colored boxes, it would've been better. i enjoyed the photographs lit up by the light boxes and displayed behind the windowpanes the best. the way they were presented was creative, and by having the light boxes, it really came across as though you were looking in on someone by the picture was illuminated.

First Fridays

        Going to First Fridays on the 6th was my first time attending a First Fridays in Richmond. I used to attend First Fridays a lot in Charlottesville with my dad, but that has started to die out since a lot of galleries are shutting down there. In Charlottesville, even when all the galleries were open, there were only about 6 to check out and there would be a couple that would always show crappy work every month. It was nice to see so many galleries still open here and so many people in attendance. After going, I called my dad to tell him he should come down to Richmond for a First Fridays here, since it was way more worth it to go and look at the art than in Charlottesville.

My favorite gallery for the night was the first one I stopped at, Artisan Alley. There were multiple artists featured in the show, some I liked more than others. I really enjoyed the charcoal drawings in the back of the gallery, but wasn't able to find the name of the artist anywhere. They were just black charcoal on white paper of flowing lines and curves, but as you looked closer you could spot and eye or mouth or human figure. I thought they were really well done the way the drawings filled up the whole paper and the curvaceous lines created really nice eye flow throughout the drawings.

I also enjoyed the paintings done by Michael Keeling. While I was looking at one of his paintings, he actually approached my roommate and I and talked to us for a long while about his work. He came up to us and asked us "So what do you see in this painting?" and we weren't quite sure what to say since it wasn't an image of any real object, but a large canvas of different lines and strokes painted in bright colors. he continued tell us that he asked us that because he says different age groups see different things when he asks them. Such as an older person sees something different in his art, than a child who says they see a smiley face. And he really enjoys that, because he wants people to see different thing in his art, and said he doesn't know what the hell he's doing, but just wants to have fun. I really liked that he said that, because I enjoy art where there isn't an obvious idea trying to be presented that artist wants to get across. And I also liked how he didn't take himself too seriously and that his paintings are him trying to have fun.

Above is a picture of my roommate and i at First Fridays that appeared in the Richmond Times Dispatch the next day.

Alix Pearlstein

I was only able to stay for the first part of Alix's artist talk, but from the videos I saw, I did not like her work. Yes it was different, but different isn't always good. Her videos were just bizarre,and the acting wasn't that great. This "art" wasn't visually appealing or interesting to me. The videos weren't about being visually appealing but the idea/message behind them. Her work was more conceptual than anything, and I hate artwork that is purely about the message that is supposed to come across. I feel like because because of artwork like this, that a lot of people don't take art seriously anymore, and see it as a joke.