We went to the Jerome Library to talk about the Design Process, which I found interesting.  Maybe one day it will be part of my future job.  Over the weekend, I researched local parks to take photos at for my BFA.  I went to Wintergarden Park in the evening and took lot of pictures.  I have been editing them, and so far my favorite is the one of the tree with three suns.  I would consider this image finalized at this point, which means i have met my production goal of having one done by the end of this week.  The first three images here were completely/in-progress edited, and the last three are only basic edits at this point.  These are not representative of all the edits I have done, merely just a sample of some of my favorites.

I was really surprised by the Sight and Sound Exhibition given that I found something I really liked about almost all the pieces. The first piece I really liked which inspired me the most was one of the first pieces you see when you walk into the gallery.  It’s called Woldgate Woods, Winter by DavidHockney.  It is a setup of nine displays playing videos of the same woods shot with nine different cameras.  This setup is just like what I would want for my gallery display, if it is possible.  I originally thought I would have the images cycle through take up the display area of the combines 9 screens, but seeing this also gave me the idea of some one using a iPad to scroll through the images and choose different ones to fill up the screen to and a level of interactivity. I am not really sure how this would be done technically.  Maybe Powerpoint would be able to do it?

I also really loved all the prints by Kawase Hasui.  There isa kind of flatness in them thatI really admire.  The work which most stood out to me was Zōjō-ji in Shiba, because it reminded me of a film I watched over the summer called Millenium Actress.  When I saw this work I had a strong feeling that Satoshi Kon, the director, might have been inspired by this work because the colors are so similar to certain scenes in the movie.  Both works share muted, dull colors, which contrast the dark, yet saturated pop of red.  They both also take place in winter, at least early in the story in the case of Millenium Actress.  The girl with her back to the camera in Hasui’s print has an air of mystery just like the protagonist of the film.

At 20 North Gallery, we had a very informative talk with Condessa Croninger, the art director of the gallery.  We talked mostly about commercial galleries, on topics like how we might get into one, what the requirements are, what to do and not to do, (essentially follow all the directions and check out the gallery to see it it is the right fit for you.)  Other advice we got was to learn peoples’ names, to be polite, and to not show work at the same time in different galleries that are in close proximity to each other.  I also liked the advice that you just have to keep submitting and don’t be discouraged.  Also be respectful and promote the gallery showing your work.

We met with professors today to talk about our contracts. The following is the advice I received, and my reflections.

-Keep in mind the limits of the psychical image. An image alone may not communicate to people what my inspirations (scientific theories about the universe) are or what my piece is about. Some people will walk by and not read the artist statement.

Reflection- I am ok with my concept not being apparent through looks alone, or if people will not read the artist statement.  I will revise my goal for this piece to be to create something visually interesting and please to look at, that stands on its own merits as visually appealing, even without knowledge of my inspiration.  If my art intrigues people enough to read my artist statement, that would be a bonus, because I would like people to think about or at least be aware of the fact that the world is more complex than we consider it to be.

-Make a website or brochure to educate people about the scientific concepts driving my piece, or include AR and have a hologram of a person explain the concepts.

Reflection- These are interesting ideas I will keep in mind as the semester goes on.  I want to focus on getting really strong images for this project primarily which will require a lot of experimentation and fieldwork, but if I can reach my goal sooner than later, I would like to make a website.  I am not good at coding, and I have found the AR programs that we used in the AR class which do not require programing knowledge to be prone to not working when they need to.  A website would be cool though.

The following is the research I found most helpful to my concept for my BFA project.

These videos were very helpful in explaining the nature of reality

1:58 onwards is what is relevant. Dena showed me this video last semester.

An Intuitive Explanation of Quantum Mechanics: Explains terms and concepts that relate to how the universe might/does operate, the nitty gritty is not really relevant and mostly over my head, but the underlying ideas about reality are relevant

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/apbcLXz5zB7PXfgg2/an-intuitive-explanation-of-quantum-mechanics

No-hiding theorem: My takeaway from this is that information is not lost, it just moves, when it appears information is lost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-hiding_theorem

I will be exploring the work of Ellen Jantzen and Terri Loewenthal. Both of these artists’ work deals primarily or in full with the environment and how psychological states can be represented using it.  They are both influenced by their immediate environment, and use unique approaches to achieve imaginative results. Both of their work looks like it is digitally manipulated at first glance, and while it turns out that Ellen’s is, Terri’s work is not.  Each of these artists is also inspired by similar areas geographically, with Ellen inspired by New Mexico and Terii inspired by California.  Both of these artists approach to landscapes is inspiring to me and makes me excited to to incorporate aspects of their artistic process into my own work.

http://lenscratch.com/2013/08/ellen-jantzen-disturbing-spirits/

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8047455/

In the Studio With…Ellen Jantzen

Ellen Jantzen is a photographer and photo montage creator who got her start with photography in 2003.  She started to make art after she became disillusioned with the corporate world. She is best known for transforming nature in unique ways.  She says that it digitally manipulating the photo is her way of bringing herself into the photo. Her series Losing Reality was inspired by her mother-in-law changing as she developed Alzheimer’s and became a different person. Her first landscape pieces were part of a series called Disturbing the Spirits which was inspired by the aging of her parents while she lived in St. Louis. Ellen works from an emotional side intuitively because she thinks it is more genuine and fresh.  She also says that she tries to name her pieces poetically and uses a thesaurus often to title her work. Of her work, she says that she likes to work by combining her emotional interior and her graphical sense, and that they are both necessary for a completed peace.

“Like I’m working with them, alongside them, in tandem.”: Twin meets Terri Loewenthal

https://www.wired.com/story/psychscapes-photo-gallery/

Terri Loewenthal creates in camera collages of the Californian landscaping. She doesn’t know what her photographs will look like when she goes to take them. Her photo series Psychscapes explores her adopted home state of California and frequently involves overlapping sky, terrain, and blurry shapes. She frequently goes camping to escape life in the city, and this is where she takes her photos. She shoots her photos with a Mamiya 645 camera and colored filters. Then she uses self-made reflective devices to compose scenes that resemble double exposures but everything is actually shot at once.  She says that her work proposes to the viewer what it would do you like to climb into the fantastic terrain in her photos.  Of her process, she says that she’s always reacting to what is happening in front of the lens and thinking on her feet. She’s also found that places that are typically designated picture taking spots that say things like ‘scenic view’ often feel very flat. She also limits herself to photographing the landscape within a 360° radius, and combines aspects of the terrain in front of and behind her into one shot. She says that it took her four years to come up and come close to perfecting her method of creating images.

Experimentation:

In the first image, I was playing around with the liquify tool to get different effects. I was  playing with a single image and seeing how I could change it in different ways, that I haven’t seen Ellen Jantzen use, like the liquify tool.  She uses filters sometimes obviously in her work, and I wanted to experiment with that same in-your-face editing.

I thought about how Terri incorporated multiple frames of her immediate environment into one image and tried to copy that effect with the second image.  I wondered what would happen if I duplicated and stretched parts of the image to obscure shapes and used a lighten filter to blend the abstraction into the original picture.

In the third image, I thought about how Terri said her photographs were like paintings. I try to incorporate this idea by downloading an impressionistic brush set. I liked the spontaneity of the brush set but in the end I was not pleased with how it turned out or how it was turning out, so I moved on.

I went to Wintergarden Park and took the image that inspired the fourth one. I was captivated by Terri’s colors and her Psychscapes series. I tried to incorporate some of that fun exploration of color in the bottom image. There’s also clear influence from Ellen Jantzen in the perfect lines created by rows of pixels present in the image. I also love how Ellen and Terri create new landscapes, I tried to incorporate that will also adding my own spin to create the final image. By this last image, I feel like I was able to create something I liked, that was visually pleasing and completely transformative from the original image. I will continue to use the lessons and creative methods I have learned through researching each of these artists for my BFA project.

In the Sights and Sounds Exhibition at the Toledo Museum of Art, there were a lot of inspiring and creative works on display.  The one that inspired me in relation to my BFA project was called Woldgate Woods, Winter, 2010 by David Hockney.  It was a nine videos on nine monitors that was slightly out of sync.  His artist statement says that the piece is “a continued exploration of time, landscape, and memory.”  He created this piece by using nine different cameras filming the woods.  I was also thinking about displaying my images on nine different monitors and seeing his work gave me the idea of having different parts of an image switch out with parts of other images change on the monitors, to create an even greater sense of unstable space and nature.

Another piece I enjoyed was the black and white film photographs of the trees.  They were the same image, but one was inverted.  I liked how they were displayed, where the viewer had to walk behind a black curtain to see them, and they were dimly lit.  Depending how things pan out, this might be another option for display in the gallery.

I consider digital imaging and photography my primary medium.  The image editing process especially is my favorite thing to do.  I feel tireless when I am editing an image I care about.  My favorite things to shoot are landscapes and nature.  I also enjoy other mediums like digital painting.  I do digital photography and make photo montages, using my computer with Photoshop and Lightroom.  I have been using Photoshop and a camera for many years, and I only recently got into Lightroom, which I really enjoy.  For my other classes, I have made an etching and done 3D modeling that I am pleased with.  My favorite part of 3D modeling was editing the final image and making the model seem as if it existed in the space as the photo.  I feel like I have just recently identified a style in my work, which can be summarized as altering and abstracting nature.  My editing style involves heavily modifying and combining images in experimental ways.  I use blending modes frequently, and I like to combine them to achieve unique effects.  I am drawn to loosely defined and blurry shapes.  Refining this style and finding ways to make it work more effectively is one of the options I see for myself going forward this semester. 

Creatively, I find myself drawn to images that bend reality, anywhere from subtly to overtly.  As far as motifs, themes, and subjects go, I am interested in a variety of things.  I am drawn to the sky, aviation, nature, the female form, long hair, the internet, technology and computers, graphic design, Art Nouveau, anime, sociology, philosophy, psychology, and scientific theories about the nature of reality.  The images above were inspired by Plato’s Theory of Forms, and the Holographic Universe Theory.  Plato’s Theory of Forms asserts that the physical realm is only a shadow, or image, of the true reality of the Realm of Forms.  The Holographic Universe Theory is the theory that everything in the universe is a kind of hologram, based on the discovery that black holes store information on the surface of their spatial boundary.  So, it would theoretically be possible to reconstruct something psychically that had fallen into a black hole using the information that gets spread on the spatial boundary, and from there the whole universe could be constructed from information on the spatial boundary of a black hole.  In the same way information is spread across the surface of the black hole in the theory, I spread the original photo across itself to create the abstract shapes seen above. 

I enjoy both art for art’s sake, and interpretive and symbolic art that has a deeper meaning.  Persuading people and sparking discussion is something I am interested in doing with my art.  As far as where I want to take my images professionally, I am somewhat unsure.  I completed an internship over the summer at Anthony Ziccardi Studios, where I was a photo editor.  I found that I really enjoyed working there, so being a photo editor is something that I would definitely like to do, but I want to explore others areas of digital art as well.  I also have some interest in the fields of graphic design, and web design.  I have very little actual experience with web design and graphic design currently, though they are fields I want to explore in more depth post-graduation.  Although I’m not very good, I like to draw sometimes as well. 

The theme of nature unifies the majority of my most recent work.  While the concepts ultimately diverge, they share some similarities.  Some of my digital images and my prints explore how nature is perceived by people on a technical level, and suggests that what we see should not always be taken as truth.  The two images pictured above examine the relationship between technology and nature.  They have more similarities than people give them credit for, while at the same time being very different.  For example, molecules and pixels make up the bigger picture that we observe with our eyes.  Whether we are looking at the real thing or a picture, our eyes don’t discriminate, and it’s all information just the same.  There’s a lot of art and talk about how technology and nature clash, with technology often being painted in a negative light.  The thought of technology as a natural evolution of nature should also be considered more often.  Human made is nature made.   

My prints focus on color in relation to nature and humans.  There is not one universal way of seeing.  Color is only visible to us because our imperfect brains can process it.  Color appears differently to different people, and the visually impaired can “see” through other means.  What is there physically may not be perceivable to the human eye.  Some examples are ultraviolet light, and under certain conditions, infrared light.  Our moods are another factor that can also affect how we see the world, in a less literal sense.  These ideas are expressed in my work by showing the same scene in different colors.

One artist that inspires me visually and technically is Ellen Jantzen.  I chose the images above because I either resonate with them or I feel they are representative of Ellen’s style.  I like how she assimilates weirdness with reality.  Her art makes me feel calm.  When I look at it, I think it is very close to some of what I am interested in doing with digital imaging.  I also feel like we have the same inspiration.  On her website (ellenjantzen.com), there is a quote from Aesthetica Magazine which reads, “Ellen Jantzen unearths new states of reality through digital manipulation.  Scientific theories about space, time and the ever-expanding universe provide a starting point for a portfolio which looks beyond the surface to reveal new layers of meaning.”  This feels like it could be my artist statement.  A lot of her work incorporates one weird element, like the tan mountain lines or the yellow tree lines in the bottom left and top right images, with realistic landscapes.  The way she manipulates her photos is traditionally collage-like, but her work is also unapologetically digital.  However, her art falls just short of really resonating with me, as I prefer a little more weirdness going on in my images.  That’s why the top left and bottom right images resonate a little more with me, as they have more than one weird element incorporated.  They feel very static to me and I would like a little more movement in her pieces.  I like the movement in the bottom right image.  Another reason the images fall short for me, is that I gravitate towards more saturated colors, and the color palette Jantzen typically uses is very subdued.  I find analyzing her images very productive because it helps me consciously realize my style and visual tendencies.  I may not necessarily know what is going on narratively in each piece, but after viewing it, I want to know, and I think that encapsulates a goal of mine when it comes to my art.  The things that I described that make her images fall short of being more resonant with me is where my own art is distinct from hers. 

For my BFA project, I want to continue the idea that what we see is not tantamount to truth.  I want to illustrate this by abstracting and altering nature.  There are so many ideas and theories about our universe that try to propose a possibility for why it is the way it is, or even what it is.  Scientists and philosophers have come up with a lot of interesting theories.  One possible idea which I have not explored yet is Eternalism, or the idea that all time exists at once.  I would like to do more research into what is out there. 

Bibliography

Ellenjantzen, Aesthetica Magazine, 2018, www.ellenjantzen.com/.

Cheryl Strayed Quotes

“You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what your plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don’t have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history of economics or science or the arts.

“You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that’s all.”

I guess I have a simpler, more hedonistic view than the one expressed here, which is that you just need to be happy, whether that involves financial rewards, being kind, or artistic fulfillment. Similar to the view expressed here, I don’t think there is one permanent road to happiness or success.  As for the last quote, I like it. People’s’ lives can be enriched in many different kinds of ways, not only monetarily.

Ira Glass on Creativity

It’s my first time learning about this phase. I agree with the notions presented in the video. I have heard that the people that don’t succeed are the people that quit, and I agree with that wholeheartedly. Well I may go through periods where I don’t feel motivated to make art, I can’t see myself ever stopping completely. It is very reassuring to hear that I will get through this phase where I don’t feel like my art is everything I want it to be.

Roberto Lugo

I enjoyed his story. I liked that he wrote “this wheel kills hate” on his pottery wheel, which reminded me of “this machine kills fascists” on Woodie Gunthrie’s guitar. I was also touched by how he was willing to sit down with the people that he was ideologically opposed to and tried to come to an understanding. He even put the confederate flag on his pot, so that he could feel the racist man feel that he saw him as a human with values. I have watched some other Ted talks about how people have confronted racism in non confrontational ways and seen great success. The one in particular I’m thinking about involves a black man who opened a leader of the KKK’s eyes, by sitting down with him and talking with him, until they became friends.

Living the Question Podcast: How We Can Embrace Vulnerability by Krista Tippett

I agree that vulnerability is like pain and fear, we have to practice it, and that it is both humanizing and countercultural. I also agree that vulnerability nurtures empathy, which I think more of is desperately needed in the world. Question that I have is how do you know when it is safe to be vulnerable? That is a question I often struggle with, and causes conflict in my daily life.

John Cleese on Creativity

I don’t know how I feel about the notion that our subconscious is solving our creative problems. I think it might be more true for some people than others if it has any ground. For the most part that is in my experience with art. I do disagree that to get creative ideas we must avoid distractions. I’m times distractions can be inspiration. I especially disagree with the notion that we do not get ideas from our laptops, only our subconscious. Most of my ideas come from my laptop, which you can argue passed through my subconscious, but they still came for my laptop. I experience some of the world through it, and it’s all real. I do agree with the idea that you won’t have any creative ideas when you are rushing around trying to get things done. You have to create an oasis by creating boundaries of space and time, like giving yourself a start and and ends time. I also agree that the people in power can and do abuse that power to discourage creativity.

Susan Kae Grant

The way she does her work using a studio but only capturing shadows is new to me. I really like the way she portrays dreams. Her work reminds me of movies, but not any particular ones.

David Whyle

I really like the observation that we as humans can refuse to be ourselves contrary to animals. This made me think about my own art in which I alter nature.  Maybe by doing so I am giving it a more human quality; I’m inserting some human qualities into the inhuman. I also like the quote about how we shape ourselves to fit the world, but the world also shapes us.

Chitrah Ganesh

I like the her art combines the surreal and explores feminine power. I definitely connected with the line about how our reality today resembles science fiction. Society has evolved to the point that the government is constantly watching it citizens, and AI, AR, and VR technology has advanced so far. Science has made cloning possible and genetic alteration is another ability humanity has, not to mention the high political tension in the country.

Miwa Matreyer

I love the way the story of humanity was portrayed in this piece. The transcendence is portrayed so well in her art through the dancing and the visuals. I felt like I needed to watch it a few times to appreciate everything that was happening.

Maggie Taylor

This might be one of my favorite artists that we have seen in this group. I’ve been a fan of surrealism for a long time and I love the muted colors and how she repurposes old photos to tell new stories. Her work is lovely and well composed and consistently edited. If I could meet her, I would ask her how she makes them look so consistent?

William Kentridge

His approach to his art is not one I’ve really seen done before. Before he said that he sometimes gets ideas and inspiration when he’s walking between the camera and the canvas, I was wondering why he didn’t just use a cable release to take a photo without having to walk back and forth. It is not seem something that I could relate to at first, since I prefer to work with digital media, and am used to a streamlined work process, but it made more sense to me once I thought about how taking a break from making art and then coming back to it gives me a new perspective.