Juried Shows

Today I framed two pictures that Im going to enter into the 2009 Juried Student Fine Arts Exhibition. They're two photographs from my final assignment for a photography class last semester. Im also planning to enter a juried show through myartspace.com. I entered into a juried show through myartspace last semester and want to do it again for the competition "London Calling". You post a portfolio of your work online than can contain up to 20 images and then the jurors choose the winning works, and if your work is chosen it is shipped off to London to be shown in a gallery there. I haven't yet picked out all the works I would like to enter into that competition, but I have some in mind.

Intermediate Photography Project

In intermediate photo we just got done with a project where we had to copy the work of another artist. I chose to copy one of Francis Bacon's screaming head paintings. When looking through a book of Bacon's paintings I really liked this one disturbing and nightmarish image  in black and white of a screaming man. I knew it would be a challenge to copy because I had to produce a photograph while  the work I chose was a painting and not a realistic painting what so ever. I chose my dad to be my model, thinking if I chose a friend to model they wouldn't take it as seriously since they would have to make bizarre face. I wanted to create the lines in Bacon's painting in my photograph, so when i took the pictures of my dad I had him sit on an exercise ball and bounce up and down while I shot him from the torso up using a tripod.  I was happy with the way the photos turned out but when i printed them they still needed something else to look more like the painting, so then I started experimenting with overlapping my negatives. I overlapped three negatives so that they didn't line up exactly to help create the painterly effect in Bacon's work. After doing that, the photos were looking a lot better, but I still wasn't completely satisfied, so I then decided to paint on the developer in addition to overlapping the negatives. I was really pleased with the way they ended up turning out, and although they didn't look exactly like Francis Bacon's painting I think they captured the same concept and mood.

Amy Stein

Out of the two projects Amy showed I preferred her "Domesticated" work to "Stranded". It was an interesting concept to take these stuffed animals and recreate stories of the animals' encounters with people. I liked the one photograph of the dead deer in the back of the truck with the blood coming out of its head and surrounding it on the truck bed. It reminded me of a photograph I took in high school of a deer carcass rotting on train tracks. She said something about how people think the picture is gruesome and when I showed people my photograph a lot of people thought it was disgusting, but I thought it was the coolest photograph  I had taken to date. I also liked the photo taken from behind the little girl standing with the wolf/coyote in her yard. The composition was nice and just the fact of there being little helpless girl standing there looking at this wild animal crouching and ready to run and pounce on her, I thought the scene was set set up quite well.

  I was less impressed with the "Stranded" series. i didn't really buy the whole concept of it. She started off with saying how it reflected the Bush administration and it slacking when it came time to react to during Hurricane Katrina, I just had to role my eyes. I thought it was a big stretch, and from looking at her photos you would have no idea that was her concept, they just looked like people broken down on the side of the road.  I feel if an artist has to reach that for a concept to go with their work, it shows a weakness in what they have created.

Harrison Street Cafe

I went and saw the photographs at Harrison St. Cafe one day when going to eat lunch with a friend. I always enjoy a coffee shop or restaurant displaying artwork that you can look at while you're eating. I liked a lot of the photographs and how there was a nice variety of work ranging from music photography to a close up of a cat. I thought it was nice to have a bunch of different photographers work up in one place. The only down side to the setting was that it was difficult to see all of the work up close because all the photos were hung right above tables, so you don't want to be creeping up on people while they're eating to look at the photographs.