Artist Lectures: SMP Presentations

Alyson Moore – Imprints

Alyson Moore’s work dealt with the idea of connecting strangers who normally pass each other without notice and breaking down social barriers. In one of her artworks, To Someone from Anyone, she had people write anonymous letters to anyone. The anonymity of both sender and receiver broke down social barriers for people who would otherwise be afraid to talk to someone they do not know. She found a common desire in people to associate with strangers.

When she worked with found objects, which was people’s trash, she realized that everyone shares daily activities without realizing that other people go through them also. An example is soda bottle caps. Each person who threw away a bottle cap had participated in buying, opening, drinking the soda and finally throwing away the bottle and cap. By bringing together these shared found objects in a work of art, she creates a new interaction between people. People had touched and interacted with the things they threw away, so when these things interact, it creates interaction between those who touched the objects.

One of my favorites out of her works were the portraits she made of the moment she met people. She went out into daily life and talked to strangers. Her portraits recreate the moment she met each person through image and text. They are expressions of her first impressions of these people. The artwork breaks out of the frame, representing her breaking of social barriers. When I looked at each portrait, it was like being in that moment inside of her head. The large scale of the work and its breaking of the frame surround the viewer in that moment.

Her final work was about places. Everyday we go to communal places and we are unaware of the people who are there before us. Each person’s visit to a communal place overlaps with another, just like the fingerprints we leave on things at these places. She created large images of fingerprints on clear backgrounds and they hung from the ceiling. Each fingerprint can be viewed on its own or as overlapping with multiple other fingerprints, just like the moments. Viewers can move through the space between the fingerprints without restriction on their movements or interactions. The fingerprints themselves create a new space for people to interact.

Courtney Teed – Photography

Courtney Teed photographs conventional objects she finds and makes them look unconventional and interesting. She goes out into the world to find things to photograph that most people would not take a second look at. When she finds something, she shares the physical space with the object to find a unique view. Some of her photographs look abstract because they are taken from unrecognizable angles. Her photographs are taken from viewpoints that most people would never see from. When I look at the photographs, I cannot always recognize what the object is and I will look at the photograph for several minutes to figure it out. ­­If I finally do realize what the object is, I am amazed that I have seen it from such a strange and new angle.

Her photographs are black and white because the world is in color. Black and white makes the image less connected to the real world and enhances its abstractness. The prints are big to give a more direct relationship between the image and the viewer. The photographs do not have titles, but are usually numbered. This leaves out the context of the objects so the viewer can see what they see, not what may actually be there.

Art SMP Presentations: Tara Hutton and Diana Abells

I found the SMP projects of both Tara Hutton and Diana Abells to be particularly interesting as both approached subjects that aren’t typically associated with visual arts. Diana’s blend of photography, drawing and video to describe physics equations and Cartesian planes was a fantastic mix of artistic mediums and science. I am familiar with the use of mathematics in origami, but I didn’t know how it could be applied to other art forms, so Diana’s drawings were both quite good and thought provoking. I have seen relatively straight forward illustrations of physics equations (like canon’s firing to demonstrate parabolic arcs) because physics is heavily tied to the tangible world, but seeing the geometry of three dimensional Cartesian planes in a drawing of a guy stretching his cheek and hiding under a blanket were pleasantly abstract. Tara’s cutouts had a unique way of addressing both gender and the way a viewer can actively interact with a piece (which has lots of interesting parallels to a photo book). Her work relied on non-passive viewers to create their works using androgynous cutout characters that could be fitted with a variety of clothing and placed in various scenes with a wide array of other character and objects. I found this interesting not only due to the subversion of gender identity and the undermining of gender roles, but because of the importance of the audience in creating the work; essentially she provides the viewer with the tools and they must use them to help build the work. The sense of communal art is something that is completely foreign to me, but endlessly fascinating. It made me think about the possibilities for more involved interaction in my future photo books and how that can help my picture branch out an attain a possibly higher meaning.

Artist Talk - Gabriela Bulisova

Every time I have an opportunity to talk with Gabriella, it makes me feel worse about not taking her photo journalism class last spring. I found the work that she presented on displaced female refugees in Iraq and recent female parolees in D.C. to be extremely moving and visually fascinating. It is refreshing and very important to hear about how the lives of the citizens of Iraq have been devastated by the war; we hear very little about the war in Iraq, and what we do is usually about American casualties. This project helps to drive home the point that as tragic as American losses are in a war, occupied civilians pay a far larger price. It succeeded in making me very angry because between the people in this project and the financial crisis that the war is causing domestically, I can see that the war only serves the interest of a few wealthy individuals and is destroying the lives of hundreds of millions of people. One of the things I was most interested in during the talk and through speaking individually with her was the slideshow she presented on recently paroled women in D.C. We talked at length about the increasing demand in the photojournalism world for short videos to accompany a photo essay, brought about by the high quality video that new DSLR’s shoot. She seemed really eager for criticism on the slideshow, but I wasn’t comfortable giving any because I don’t know her well and I felt that the technical problems in the video were far outweighed by the power and the content of her project. I came to realize quite quickly that video, despite popular opinion and my own interest, isn’t really a substitution for photos. There are so many moments in her photographs that I feel would most likely be missed if she were trying to shoot a video, and there are many little moments that just probably wouldn’t have the same power in a several second long shot as they do in one photographic image. I think there is also something to be said about the fact that one can linger on a photo for as long as they like, which is not possible with a video.

Gabriela Bulisova's Lecture

I thoroughly enjoyed Gabriela’s lecture when she came as part of the Women in Warfare series. I had taken Gabriela’s photojournalism class and seen a lot of her work previously, but what was great about the lecture in addition to merely seeing new work was hearing Gabriela’s stories behind the projects. One part of this was the description of the projects in general, which included where she got the idea for the projects and the planning/logistics of it. It was interesting that several of her projects came out of work she had been doing with NGOs, which I hadn’t expected but seems like a good concept in terms of creating photographic work that works with and is potentially beneficial for the subjects. I was also fascinated by her talk of the “fixers,” her contacts in foreign countries like Syria who helped translate and helped her find willing subjects, a position in the photojournalistic process I hadn’t really thought about before.

However what I was most intrigued by was her very personal stories she related about the lives of those in her photographs. While on her own I think the photographs, especially when sequenced together, tell a narrative about her subjects, hearing the full extend of their stories really drew me in emotionally to what they had gone through. This made me think about the best way I could use this in my own photojournalistic work, perhaps in the way Gabriela used a kind of collective voice over in the sequence on Iraqi refugees in america or perhaps more extended voice over narratives telling the story of one subject.

Artist Talk - Gabriela Bulisova

Gabriela Bulisova’s art exhibition and lecture helped me to find an intimate connection to her photography, which was great after having taken a class with her and received so much of her input into our own photographic work. I appreciated being able to see so much of her work blown up on the walls and in her presentation, as I’d only seen three or four of her images in her class. I loved her use of primarily black and white images in the exhibition, with some color images included in just the right places. I also really liked the large multi-image prints on the two brick columns, with selected images expanded on the wall next to them, giving the impression of the darkroom developing and image selecting process, achieved through image enlargement.

In her lecture, Gabriela gave detailed and intimate accounts of her interactions with refugees and victims of warfare in Iraq while presenting her amazing portraits of them. She was very emotionally connected to her subjects and the experiences she had learning about their lives, and never rushed through an account, showing the audience the importance of their stories and how they can’t simply be condensed into a few minutes of explanation. They are stories most Americans usually ignore despite our country’s prevailing influence in the war. This was even more evident in her request to take more than the allotted time to discuss their stories, which the audience was obviously okay with and wanted to hear. Their lives and hardships were evident in her style of documentary photography, as she conveyed ruins, the conditions of poverty, and physical injuries while talking about the more psychological ones. I liked that Gabriela talked about the processes of documentary photographing, and how she was often limited in what she could photograph, but got around it if she could.

The film at the end of the lecture of the audio clips from women in the United States who have emerged from the prison system was also incredibly potent. It was really awesome that she showed us a “work in progress,” and even asked our input regarding it at the end of the lecture. This seems like it is going to develop into a very socially important project, considering the hostility of a large part of our nation, especially in aspects such as the job market, towards previously incarcerated individuals. Gabriela’s work conveys some very valuable social messages using the medium of striking photographs. I think that for the purpose of documentary photography, her color images create more of a connection with their audience, because they are more directly tied to reality. Her black and white images in the exhibition tended to be more abstract, while the color images in her projection were often more directly portraiture and life story-focused.

Although this isn’t related to Gabriela’s recent visit, her lecture reminded me of when I was taking her class and we went on a field trip to see Edward Burtynsky’s images of the drilling and manufacturing damage by the oil industry. During this field trip to see a documentary-style exhibition, we also got to see a presentation by several of the members of Metro Collective, the group of photographers in the DC area of which Gabriela is a part. All of the photographers whose work we saw involved documentary photography and social problems throughout the world. It was really great to see their different aesthetic styles for conveying the stories of these people and places, and to hear about all of the challenges of documentary photography. We didn’t see much of Gabriela’s work during this visit, and heard mostly from the other photographers, so finally seeing and hearing her talk about her work was a great experience.

Artist Talk - Mary Early

Mary Early’s sculptural work using beeswax and wood are fascinating, in that they entail the use of individual, similar-but-not-identical parts to support and buttress one another into a larger whole. It would take a close-up examination to observe the minor differences in the hand-made individual elements, but from a distance the work appears perfectly even and balanced. I appreciated the intricacy and time-intensiveness of her methods, and her deep thought on the characteristics of her materials. The beeswax has its own distinctive, natural smell and color, bringing elements from the external world of plant and animal life into the internal, otherwise-austere realm of the gallery space.

The simplicity of the translucent yellow against the white or black walls and floors draws the viewer into an intimate consideration of an un-enhanced natural beauty – this is also supported by the simplicity of form. Her works usually involve circular structures, whether composed of thick blocks arranged in cylindrical layers, or thinner, stick-like components propped against one another. In both cases, the work conveys the unity of elements that are largely similar but not identical. For me, this conveys the concept of DNA and the great genotypic similarity of humans, and even different species, who exist (at an ideal) in unity despite greater phenotypic variation.

Mary Early also discussed her efforts to convey a large volume with a minimal volume of materials, achieved through the materials’ engineered crutching of one another. She uses the negative space in between parts to create the imaginative space of this bulk in dimension. My favorite piece that she showed was the large cylindrical piece made of long, open-ended, semi-rectangular blocks. This was placed in the middle of a room with black walls and floors, and intentionally altered the course of the audience’s path through the room. It was an art piece you had to work around, that you had to observe – in both senses of the word. This reminded me of an artist Courtney mentioned in her SMP presentation, who created works that intentionally altered people’s passage through the space.

I liked that Mary showed her sketches of brainstorming and project planning, to demonstrate how the ideas that are collapsed onto a two-dimensional space then materialize into three-dimensional reality. This also brought back some of my thoughts on project 1, where we were asked to think of the book, generally deemed two-dimensional for the flat space of the individual page, as a three-dimensional, manipulatable object. Her work makes me want to experiment with carving the book into a boldly three-dimensional sculpture, like many of the artists people have posted on the blog. I thought that this presentation was incredibly inspiring. It’s always interesting for me to hear about sculptural work and the processes behind it, as I am quite unfamiliar with them, but they have such spatial presence and weight in reality.

Gabriela's WGSX talk - Artist Talk

Collateral Image: Portraits of Iraqi Refugees

Gabriela Bulisova, a former visiting Art Professor here at St. Mary’s gave a talk on war. Her talk was an extension of her photographic exhibition at Monty. Gabriela stated that when she was asked to be a speaker for the colloquium, that she was initially shocked because she was not a war photographer. The closest that she had been to photographing an actual war was during her time at Lebanon which was during the end of the war of 2006. However, she related that her works as a photojournalist represented other forms of war or aftermath of war that impacted not just women but also men. Her talk was focused on three main sets of her photographic works. They were Option of Last Resort. Iraqi Refugees in the United States, Iraqi Refugees, Damascus, Syria and her most recent work CONVICTIONS.

In Iraqi Refugees, Damascus, Syria, Gabriela stated that a large of number of Iraqis fled from Iraqi to neighboring countries because of the war going on in Iraq. She stated that supposedly fortunate Iraqis may sometimes be granted refugee status in the United States and be able to live there – this was the focus of Option of Last Resort. Iraqi Refugees in the United States. Many Iraqis fled to Syria such that a neighborhood in Damascus, Sayyida Zainab, is considered a hot spot for many Iraqi refugees. These Iraqi refugees live in dire conditions and because they are in Syria illegally, they can’t find decent jobs. Gabriela talked about a family she visited, the father was a doctor in Iraq but now he could not find a decent job in Syria and could barely feed his family. Another was of a woman, known as the mother of Iraqis. She gave up a part of her apartment for use as a school for Iraqi children to learn English and French. She is also the go-to person for Iraqis who are looking for housing, jobs, etc. Many Iraqis in Syria that Gabriela interviewed of photograph are anticipating the day that they would be able to go back to Iraq.

This sense of nostalgia or the feeling that things were more bearable in Iraq resonated in the tales told by Iraqis living in the United States. Many of these Iraqis were translators for the US military while in Iraq and so their lives were in danger. In Option of Last Resort. Iraqi Refugees in the United States, Gabriela took photographs of these individuals in their homes, their niches and she also played an audio recording of some Iraqis. These individuals all shared that they were grateful to the US government for giving them the opportunity to live in the US. However, in the US, they live in dire conditions and have financial problems. As I was listening to the audio, I could hear the pain and sorrow that these people felt – one of the men who spoke was almost at the point of tears. As an immigrant to the US, I can understand some of their frustration with living in the US.

In CONVICTIONS, Gabriela took us thorough the lives of women ex-convicts in D.C and how they dealt with transitioning to the society. Some of them had young children to go back to while others had changed in many ways. They were all finding it hard to adjust - be it in getting jobs or with taking care of family members or making up for lost times with their children. This project is still ongoing though and with great potential.

In all, Gabriela’s photographs were great in capturing the lives of the people she met. Some pictures were in black and white while others were in color. Also, Gabriela made use of vingetting to close in on her subjects and put them in focus. For individuals that did not want their faces to be revealed, Gabriela was able to respect their privacy but yet still capture the emotions or conditions that these individuals were in.

I thought the presentation was great and Gabriela’s work and her ability to tell a story really came through.

Art Event- Public Art, Community, Politics

There were three professors guiding this lecture- Lisa Scheer, Billy Friebele, Katie Gantz, and someone from the poli sci department who's name I did not catch. The lecture dealt with using space in artisitc and political expressions. The two that intrigued me the most were of Billy and Katie. Billy's dealt with defining the physical space in the District of Columbia and how the residents of that area defined their locations and their space; stressing DC as an organic being. His project was/is a very interactive project where people from specific areas in DC will photograph something in that space that more or less defines it, and submit their photographs to be added over layers of other photographs that make up the physical space on a map. I just thought it was very intriguing how people defined these spaces as their own and not in relation to whatever is thought to be known about the area. For example, to an outsider wandering around the national mall, they might be quick to identify the museums and/or monuments. However, to someone from the area, they might be more inclined to submit something completely different, like images of all the tourists posing in front of the camera appearing to be touching the tip of the monument--hilarious to see people do this, by the way.

Katie Gantz's contribution to this lecture was as equally interesting. Her talk was about the remodeled city of Paris from what it was in the 18th century and before, to what it has become since the 19th century. She started by pointing out the wide streets of Paris and how they outline the importance of the grand monuments that are seen at each end of the main streets. She mentioned how this model of the city, when it was new at the time, was to put an emphasis on their amazing art and architecture. However, the latest art movement in Paris seems to be tagging and street art, specifically through large stickers such as postage labels. It was pretty great being able to make that connection with taggers here in the states that picked up that same method. She basically explained how the seemingly vandalizing acts are an art form in the contemporary Parisian art culture. She mentioned how these street artists will apply the stickers even on the most famous of architectures that are found all over the city. I thought it was specifically interesting when she called specific tags a 'treasure' to find. Seeing as how some street artists go above and beyond to display their work in the most intricate ways as possible, there are specific tags that are thought of as rare and become a pleasant surprise to be able to come across one of these treasures.

Mary Early-Artist talk

The art talk earlier this semester was with the local Washington, D.C. artist Mary Early. Early is renowned sculptor, printmaker and drawer who primarily works with beeswax and wood material. She ultimately creates works that involve post-modernist ideas, revolving around the organic nature of her materials. One of the first things that Early stated was her reason for choosing to work with such an ephemeral material was that it wasn’t permanent, which was an intentional decision. She takes long strips of wood, glues them together and then literally paints the beeswax onto the wood in 3-dimensional forms that somehow exploit the architecture. She says that lighting is an important part of her work as well, and that she wanted to create works that seemed like they made themselves. One particular work of beeswax in a circular pattern, with holes around the entire sculpture, plus one in the very center was very beautiful. The yellow color of the beeswax works nicely with the gallery setting that it’s displayed in, and it seems so smooth and organic, yet it’s completely man-made. She seems to work a lot with geometrical forms and the axis’ that each can create when placed against eachother. From doing this, Early was able to create sculptures that seem to “continue infinitely.” One last alteration that she applies to her work is the use of water onto the wood and beeswax, which is done to warp the look of the wood, and to “cause deformity to result in something unplanned.” I honestly really liked Early’s work, although I’m not a sculptor I could clearly see where she was grabbing her ideas; simply working with the continuation of lines that connect together to the center is one of her main paths to creating this work. Using the element of repetition, Early says that she is inspired by sculptor martin Puryear, whose work obviously resembles Early’s. Quiet and poetic, the sculptures seem to take over the space of the room with its single form, forcing the audience to take a step back and actually explore the natural form and shape of the sculpture. Overall, I really enjoyed Mary Early’s talk on her life and work. I think that her work embodies a concept that most people can’t connect with internally, natural form, so for her to push this onto her audience is exceptionally pleasing.

Gabriela Bulisova-artist talk

The artist talk that I attended was for the wonderful Gabriela Bulisova, who I’ve actually had the pleasure I’ve being a photography student for. Gabriela is a Czechoslovakian photographer who is based in Washington, D.C. yet photographs all over the world. Her work mostly focuses around Iraqi refugees and lifestyles, as well as native Washington, D.C. previously incarcerated women. She works with documentary photography and is constantly sending a message to her audience with her photographs. Documenting internally displaced Iraqi refugees, sometimes forced to flee is Gabriela’s main source of content in her current work. The title of the WGSX colloquium, Women in War, was one of shock to Gabriela, stating “I’m not a war photographer!” Soon though, she said that after viewing her work over and over, she realized why she was asked to participate in this show. Her rich black and white photographs are from years of work, visiting various countries such as Damascus and Syria, getting to know the residents and families that live out their everyday lives there. Although she stated that most of her encounters revolved around beings living in dire situations, “desperate and disillusioned,” she has found a way to tell their stories discreetly, protecting the refugees from any documentation harm. From listening to Gabriela’s stories, I learned a great deal of information about the nations and each individual’s life. Having to travel from one nation to America can be really difficult, the transition can sometimes be too devastating for the refugees though, which sometimes forces them back to Iraq, simply because they feel they have no place here in the U.S. Gabriela photographed several men and women, and even their homes and surroundings, to show her audience the trials and hardships that were taking place in living there. She also stated how she wanted to diminish any identity within the individuals photographed, because honestly they didn’t really have any identity left; that and the obvious reason of protection from terrorists. Most of the people she photographed are still in fear for their lives, mostly due to helping out the United States through translators or military help, which keeps them secluded, away from outside life. One very important fact that Gabriela brought up was that with one photograph of the neighborhood she stayed in, from inside the house looking out a window. She stated that this was the only photograph of the neighborhood because her translator told her it was way too dangerous to be seen in the streets there, especially as a documentary photographer. I don’t know if I could deal with the reality of having to constantly fear for my life and others lives because of photographs that I wanted to document and tell a story with; a story that needs to be told. It shows that Gabriela not only has strength behind the lens but a deep relationship with those in front of the lens as well. The ending of the talk included audio clips from several African American women in D.C. who were recently just let out of incarceration. The photographs displayed during the audio captured the women’s faces and emotions that they described in their stories; how they are dealing with the hardships of being placed back into American society, a society that doesn’t necessarily promote previously incarcerated women. To hear the stories was very emotional for me. As a viewer you get the sense that you should be out there helping these women, and not just the incarcerated women, but the refugees as well. To hear the stories of what they have gone through, and how it’s been hard for them to live their afterlives in America, is really devastating and sad. To know that our country doesn’t give all the help it says it does, to human beings that are in dire needs, is to live in a place that revolves around censorship and denial.