Sculpture Project 3: Thoughts

When this project was first proposed to us, it was framed within the idea of a container or case being used to house something precious/ of personal importance and so where where; therefore, asked to bring in our most prized possession. This turned out to be nothing more than a generative exercise because when these items were brought in and we all began to discuss them, we started to focus on what framing an object does for it.

The items that I brought in were a Polaroid Land Camera 250 and a Selmer B♭ Clarinet, and I some ideas where I was going to put one of these items on display as sort of an ironic jab at their nominal function (to make art, not to be it). However, as I thought more about this and we started to discuss more this idea that art isn't so much the object as it is the reciprocal relationship between said object and the institution that presents it as such, I started to move away from these specific objects.

What, instead, I turned to were the cast plaster mason jars that I had been creating for the previous project. Instead of putting the camera on display as the art (rather than that which it creates) I thought it might be interesting to put a 'artisanally-produced' copy of a mass-produced object into a 'high art' setting. In addition, I thought about including broken casts, extra casts, and the moulds themselves to full remove all sort of magic from the object, in direct contradiction to its place as a 'work of art'

Sculpture Project 2: Thoughts

For this sculpture project, our subject was mould making. Our two choices of media were cast plaster or cast wax. If we wanted to use plaster, we had to create a open-face latex mould of our object first, but if we wanted to cast only wax, we could either make the time-consuming latex mould, or simply take a plaster cast directly off the object itself and use that.

When we first started this project, I brought in two objects that I was interested in working with. One was a pint mason jar, and the other was a small empty bottle that once contained Very Cherre: Tart Cherry Blueberry Juice. I wanted to cast the mason jar in plaster because I think it is a very striking and iconic object, especially in the quasi-rural midwest, where they are ubiquitous, and as I find plaster to be an aesthetically pleasing yet quantidian material, I thought an appropriate choice. I wanted to cast the bottle in wax through, because of its unique shape, and when turned upside down I thought it looked kind of like an stylised tree.

Once I started casting though, I became more and more interested in the wax bottles than the mason jars and so I set them aside for now. Rather than make a simple two piece mould though (as the rest of my class had done) I decided to be adventurous and try to make a three piece mould so that I could include the detail of the depressed bottom of the bottle (which otherwise would have been a fairy incapacitating undercut had I left it unfilled in). What this extra step resulted in though, was many hours of frustrating as my moulds kept breaking, and I kept remaking them, until I finally finished the project, having mixed approximately 10 batches of plaster for the wax bottles alone, but also a very interesting, otherwise impossible shape in cast wax.

Silkscreen Project 6: Thoughts

For my final project, I had a large number or ideas, inspired mainly by the works of the Dutch painter Piet Mondriaan. I wanted to work within series (as per my previous work in the class) but instead of simply repeating a simple monochromatic form, I was going to print a complicated shape utilizing the primary colours and black.



After talking with my professor, I decided to further expand this project by not only altering the internal colours of the shape, I would also alter the backgrounds to add a further element to the conversation.



Eventually though, after much more sketching and more talking with my professor, I decided to simplify this idea (which had become quite large indeed) and just print a single monochromatic form on an a variety of backgrounds.



In an effort to avoid have a very static project, I devised an organic system for choosing the background colours in which I started with either blue, red, or white and simply kept adding red, blue, or black respectively to the inks so that the colours printed would presumably change over time. Due to the unique problem of the screen drying and my haphazard almost arbitrary approach to the colour changing, the final images that resulted were not static at all but instead full of a wide range of colours, tones, and textures.

Colour Project 4: Thoughts

For my final project for Colour Photography, I wanted to do something that was an extension of my earlier work in the class but also moved in a new direction. The reason for this was that I felt much of my work this semester had suffered from my busy schedule. The combination of being very busy with extracurricular activities and my other class commitments (both in silkscreening and video) meant that I was not able to commit as much time as I wanted to (and probably needed to commit) to the class and as such I haven't been that happy with my work. Based on this, rather than trying to go back on change up a project that I had cobbled together, I decided to instead just go in a new direction, as I thought a breath of fresh air, would breathe some life into this final project, an aspect missing in my other shown work.

After considering a variety of options, I decided that to go with shooting at the abandoned cement factory near the municipal water treatment facility of my town. I originally took interest in it when I saw the factory in one of my professor's photographs, but later visited the site and became fascinated with it. Nestled in the trees off a private road and almost entirely hidden from view unless you are almost on top of it, the factory is a monolith of a bygone age. Its aged signs, rusted parts, and highly suspect structural stability construct a fascinating portrait of abandonment mixed with nostalgic past; there is an oddly melancholic beauty to the entire scene.

The shoot itself was moderately successful, shooting on medium format after a long hiatus back to 35mm was really nice and I think that the pictures, though I did not have long to spend wandering about, were well chosen and well representative of the space. I do wish that I had had more time, or an assistant but as I was on a tight schedule, a few miles trek through wind and snow and trespassing, I am still happy with what I was able to do. Being at the factory again –the last time I was there was the spring– was an interesting experience and I have a lot of ideas for stuff to shoot in the future, but for now, I just have to see where to go with what I shot

Thanksgiving Break

For my Thanksgiving break, I decided to not go anywhere but instead work on what I saw as uncompleted or unsuccessful projects. During this time I reprinted both my third project (the 2-colour print) and my fourth project (the 3-colour print). I also logged a large number or hours doing cosmetic surgery on my fifth project (the poster project). Many of the posters were missing elements/had miss-printings which I decided to go back through all 46 of which I liked best and touch up by hand.

All-in-all I must have spent approximately 6-10 hours a day in the silkscreen studio over the break, but I really got a lot of practice in on the finer points of screen printing and I think it was well worth the effort.

Silkscreen Project 5: Poster

For this project, we were tasked as a class to each create a run of posters for a real event, specifically fifty in number, that were to be hung around campus. As a member of the students administrators for Spiral, Oberlin's genre fiction literary magazine, I decided to make posters for their spring semester general interest meeting.

In the design of my poster, I wanted to create something that was subdued in character; that evoked a more refined sensibility (as Spiral is often seen as a less serious, less professional magazine). Because of this I chose the greys, white, and black, as I felt they are often seen as clean colours; they draw attention but are not loud. I chose to print the background as I did and the specific fonts for a related reason. The uneven edges of the background I felt looked somewhat like a page torn from a notebook and the fonts were chosen as I felt they were somewhat reminiscent of those of a typewriter, what has become one of the most iconic symbols of highbrow literaryism.

Finally, in an quasi-ironic send off to all the ideals I tried to cultivate with the rest of the poster and to emphasise the idea that Spiral is not your generic literary magazine, I created the font-art word at the top, which I though added a sense of quirky dynamism to the otherwise rigid, mostly static piece.

Colour Project 3: Thoughts

Unsatisfied with my last project, I decided to try (for this project) to again move out of my comfort zone and try working, not only with an assistant, but also with models and in a specified setting.

My original idea was to work within the confines of temporal juxtaposition to address the issues of identity and habitual norms in the context of college life and outside of it. I was going to stage, what to me was stereotypical or commonplace moments of college life in setting and scene and place within those images a figure that I manufactured a out of a post-collegiate context. My inspiration for this project came to me in the image of five or six college students sitting around a messy quad uproariously drinking PBR while a lone figure in nice clothing stood in the background mixing themself a strong drink in a shaker amongst assorted top shelf alcohols. The title for this image was taken from the popular DJ Kicken Song "Ain't No Party Like an Alcoholic Party," which speaks to the concept of an alcoholic party versus a party where alcohol is present and also what constitutes a night of drinking in college and what is one post-graduation.

However, after presenting this image and some others (a stack of Starbucks Doubleshot cans next to a French press and a bag of Kona cofee and the image of three people in a communal shower, two of whom were naked and the other clothed in a bathrobe, hairnet, and flip flops) and my general ideas about the project to the class, they brought up a lot of things that had previously not occurred to me. As opposed to the juxtaposition between in versus out of college, they drew my attention a lot to the ideas of class and, in my case, the differences in taste and lifestyle in the Unites States (the home of many of my classmates) and in Europe (where I ostensibly 'grew up'). They also confirmed my suspicion that my third image (in the shower) was not really relevant to my chosen topic.

As class was really not what I was going for at all, I decided to return to my project and try to brainstorm some more about how I could eliminate these and focus in on this idea of temporal juxtaposition. Interestingly enough, through this exploration, I started to think more and more about my sense of identity as an individual and how this project was about not just the temporal college-to-postcollege shift, but also the cultural shift as well.

Silkscreen Project 4: 3-Colour Project

Within the project I attempted to explore quality of reproduction, for which silkscreening is most commonly used. My idea was to create posters for a fictitious company that offered mass-produced "personalised gifts" for a variety of [Christian/American] holidays. These would then be displayed in a huge 4x4 grid on a wall to amplify the crass overwhelming, if not claustraphobic nature of the posters.

When creating this project, I was thinking about ideas of commercialisation, what I see as the ever-increasing laziness/detachment of the general public, and the narrow-minded majority-centric ideals that drive a lot of holiday cheer/celebrations in the United States.

Unfortunately, as you will see below, I have still not mastered the art of silkscreening as reproduction and so I do not view this project as complete, but more or a study in reproduction/learning experience concerning the technicalities of printing.

Fall Break

During my fall break this year, I decided to go visit my family for first break in a few years. I first met up with them in Cleveland and we all went to see one of my cousins get married in Harkness Chapel located on the Case Western Reserve campus, which I brought along a camera and decided to shoot.
After this, we all traveled back to where the reside now, in Houston, TX, having moved this summer. I then spent a few days there and during which I traveled up to San Antonio to visit my friend who is going to school at Trinity University, located there.
The photos below appear off colour because I decided to, rather than use the nice professional film I have been shooting on recently (Fujifilm Pro 160 S and Kodak Portra 160 NC), to use some Kroger brand film that I found when I purchased my last 35mm cameras - the discolouration is due to the fact that it expired in 1999. The reason that I decided to do so is that I find the false colour readings that often come with shooting on expired film/printing on expired paper are very interesting and often surreal/nostalgic, ideas I thought appropriate for weddings. Once I left the wedding though, I thought that since I had started anyway, I might as well try to finish off rest of Kroger rolls, which I shot while back in Texas

Silkscreen Project 3: 2-Colour Print

Circles and Bars

With this project, I decided to continue my exploration of 'repetition of form' that I started in my previous silkscreen project. I don't really see this piece as very resolved or even well produce by more of a study in both technique and concept.

The overarching idea behind this exercise was to examine the tension created from between the interactions inherent in the piece. The main source of tension was between colours: white, red, and blue (all very basic and unadulterated, used straight from the manufactures inks) and how they interact with each other and the negative space of the white card stock. This was further complicated by their depictions in the simple geometric forms of the rectangle and circle and how these shapes are used to create a certain phasing that happens within the piece.

Silkscreen Project 2: B/W Project

Series I

Many people in my class are accomplished drawers, sketchers, and/or painters but as I am not by any stretch of the imagination, I decided to instead concentrate on something I could make; on form rather than illustration. What this eventually turned out to be was a collection of 14 lines that came to me while I was musing about what to make.

The lines are separate into four groups (2-4-5-3) and together form a semi-cohesive figure that is curved on one side and straight on the other. What I tried to do with this was to print the image both singularly and layered upon itself multiple times to express how duplication of the images through silkscreening could take one simplistic shape and create a whole host of unique objects.

Unfortunately, as I am an not a very good printer, they prints did not come out perfectly clear as I have originally intended. Because of this, the project has also developed a second aspect; not only is it exploration of how duplication and scale can change an image, but also how my imperfect grasp of the process contributes to the creation of imperfect images whose degradation also add to the concept of the unique image.

Colour Project 1: Trial 2

After my initial failure, I decided the best way to re-invigorate the project for myself, I decided to I tried to step out of my comfort zone and buy a bunch of supplies, get an assistant and stage a metaphorical scene with objects, which I choose carefully for their assorted cultural/literary significance.

I took all of my collected objects (2 exact copies of each) and went to a nearby field. I then proceeded to destroy each object in a different manner, the destruction itself I filmed, making the process into somewhat of a performance piece itself. I then placed the mated object (the unbroken twin of the first) into the wreckage and photographed the scene.

Each photo was then going to be labeled with the metaphorical reference that the object was supposed to contain within itself. The point of everything was to speak to the idea that one always can continue on even through trials/hardship and in the wake of the destruction of the a value itself; that in my opinion, human will is insurmountable.

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Unfortunately, after all this planning, preparation, and process, fate through a wrench in the works and while I was developing, the spool on which I loaded my film, fell apart, and thus I developed my negatives as one large chuck, thoroughly ruining them all. As such I had to rethink what I had done, and where I was/could possibly go.

Colour Project 1: Trial 1

For our first project, we all wrote words on a strip of paper and three were chosen at random. We then voted on which of those three liked best.
What was eventually chosen was the words Rebirth/Renewal.

After some consideration, I decided that what I wanted to do was to photograph a space over time; specifically, a space waking up. After some consideration of the possibilities, I decided that the best place to shoot this would be in the the Perlick Commons, a glass atrium, with a small cafe-counter, near where I live that is a popular breakfast destination for students. My plan was to show the renewal of both the space (as the sun rose) and the people (as they partook in breakfast).

When I finally went out, I set up at early in the morning, at approximately 7:00 A.M. and was there for 5 hours, (until 12:00 P.M.). My setup was relatively simple; I had two 35mm cameras (a Canon AE-1 and a Minolta X-700) on tripods with one facing towards the counter/door to the atrium and the other into the atrium where the bulk of the people sat. I then took one picture in each camera every ten minutes for a total of 25 images. Through I had to dodge a series of questions about what I was doing (usually pointing to the sign that said time-lapse art project in progress was enough) and defending my little enclave of equipment from the morning hustle and bustle, there were no real problems with the actual process of taking the pictures.

Unfortunately, nothing really worked like I had hoped. The main reason was that I encountered three large, distinct problems.
The first was that my AE-1 has a light leak problem. I had it fixed once, which stopped the issue from being a constant blight but eventually had to buy a new AE-1 due to the potential for ruined negatives. However, that camera was stolen a few months ago and my other 35mm were broken/out of batteries, so it was either run the risk, or no second camera. Some pictures did come out but none were really printable.
The second problem was that I changed the F-stop between shots. I did this thinking that I wanted to make sure that my first images were not under-exposed and the last not over-, essentially entirely for consistency. Unexpectedly, that is exactly the opposite of what I got. Essentially, the short of it is that what I was counting on to show the passage of time was the movement of shadows along the walls and floors as the sun rose, but with the change of the aperture, the shadows were perfectly clear in some, and completely gone in others.
The third problem was really stupid. I forgot to change the ISO on my cameras from 400 (I had been shooting Delta 400 for the past two months) to 160 for my Kodak Portra 160 NC, which meant that a good deal of my film was over exposed.

All in all, I was found the project very interesting conceptually and I did have a good time shooting it but after developing the film, I was very unhappy with what came out, even the images that developed well. Also, the entire process took so long and I didn't really have the time or energy to devote another five hours one morning to reshooting the project so I decided that since it only produced mediocre images anyway. I would shelve this idea away for another time and try to go in a different direction.

New Semester

This semester I am simultaneously taking two Studio classes at uni.
This is my first true dive into art here/in a long time/ever and I am fairly apprehensive about the prospects as I know the time commitments for both will be sizable and I am not sure if I have significant enough time to put as much into both of them as I would like. I guess all that I can is that we shall see.

The classes I will be taking (and thus the art that will most likely be posted soon are):
ARTS 072: Problems in Colour Photography
ARTS 054: Visual/Processes: Introduction to Silkscreening

End of Photography Class

For the past few months I have been taking a photography class on B/W Film Photography. I have thoroughly enjoyed the entire class and have definitely exponentially expanded my photographic skill base and knowledge pool. I am also beginning to understand what it means to have an expensive pastime. With cooking, you can always buy food cheaper or go to markets to get better deals, and even when that doesn't work, you can also just work with random stuff you have. However, that is not the case with photography. Especially when shooting film, the equipment (cameras and lenses), the medium (rolls of film), and the product (either computer programmes or photosensitive paper) becomes very expensive very quickly. It is possible to cut corners and such, but those "cost-saving measures" become very apparent, very fast.

However, for one of the first times in my life, I think I have really found a hobby - something that I feel okay spending inordinate amounts of my time (and money) on doing. On that interesting note, I started the class with one camera a 30+ year old Canon AE-1 with 50mm kit lens that belonged to my father, a flash that didn't work, a few filters, a 2x teleconverter, and a broken 75-210mm lens and now I own four camera bodies (two Canon AE-1, a Minolta X-700, and a Minolta SRT 101) four 50mm kit lenses a 28mm F2.8, 49mm F2.8, 135 F2.8 400mm F2.8 28-70mm F3.5-4.5, 75-210 F3.5, 85-205mm F2.8-5.4, 60-300mm F3.4-5.4, three 2x teleconverters, 4 flashes, an inordinate amount/variety of filters, two camera covers, three camera bags, a set of special glass magnifying filters, a mini-tripod, and three triggers. The best part about this is though family gifts and an amazing deal on Craigslist, I got everything I own for $120.

But back to the class, throughout the past few months I have been very busy doing work for it and trying to force my way through the learning curve for printing film. I have learned the hard way about all the various finicky aspects of film (light leaks, camera malfunctions, film inserted the backwards) and have spent countless hours reshooting and reshooting my projects. That being said, I have enjoyed every minute of it.

There is such an indescribable joy about walking out of a dark room after an entire night spent working with the perfect print in one hand and being greeted by the sun rising through the windows. It was those long nights that really made the class so worth it for me and because of that — even though it stole my life, even though I was always running around, and even though it is expensive — there is no way I will stop shooting film and taking classes.

The final assignment for the class was actually to upload all of the projects that I did during the class, with their accompanying statements. Additionally, what I decided to do was to upload all of my negatives that I didn't print for the projects to really round out my photographic journey.

The links to all of these can be found below.

In the end, looking back at the beginning of the class I came in thinking that I really knew photography even though all I had was trial-and-error and a good deal of intuition. Now that I have finished I have since discovered that those two are extremely important, but only one small part of a very big puzzle; More than anything, I have just re-enforced my belief that you can and should never stop learning, no matter what you're doing.

PROJECTS:

In all of these links you will find the various projects that I did for the class. Each one shows all of the final printed images and the negative scans from the projects, as well contains a link to the rest of the project negatives.

Experimenting Projects

Mapping Project

Emulation Project

Persona Project

Utopia Project