Back to scanning

This summer, I really want to start experimenting with scanners  to create odd worlds. I love the work of this naturalist artist; Marty Klein.  He uses a flatbed scanner to compose and create photographs. Working from nature is a very intimate action for him. 

For my final, I am inspired to use this scanning technique but in conjunction with my own cutouts. 

I want these cutouts to have a Rod Sterling feel to them. 

TWILIGHT ZONE

Caleb Cole and Wall greens.

Yesterday while sitting in the wall greens pharmacy waiting room, I drew myself out of my heavy thoughts, and began to notice the people around me. Five or six were standing or sitting, hands in the pockets, eyes, on the cellphones, leaning on a crutch or talking to their kids. And all were waiting. Most did not make eye contact. No one really smiled or chatted. All seemed preoccupied with their own problems. I then imagined taking these people out of the wall greens environment and placing them in front of a simple white backdrop.

The idea of doing something like this, reminded me of some of the work of Caleb Cole, an current avid photographer. Taking old photographs he cuts out all but one of the characters, to get the idea across; isolation in a crowded environment. Or perhaps some personal struggles in his own life.

What good do people do for each other if there is so much disconnect.

Block Printing

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/videos/b/video-block-printed-wallpaper/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6IDeqvouM&noredirect=1

Here are a couple videos showing the making process. 

Something that has been interesting me for a while is the concept of block printing. I love using backdrops in my work and I'm interested in somehow incorporating fictitious textiles as backgrounds. Wall paper began to be used more as a cheep substitute for fabric textiles. It found it's way both in Eastern and Western cultures resulting in what we see now. Block printing began to rise in popularity  around the 1700's as importation began and cultures mixed.

Typical wall paper we see now in common stores cannot hold a candle to its ancestors.

Legit Block Printers take extreme amounts of time and patience to produce layer upon layer of different colored paints onto the paper. Then it is carefully hung out to dry before being once again laid out and touched up.

Working in this class has made me realize that I love to portray the feeling of theatrics. Though, block printing is far out of my reach, I still am inspired and influenced in the making process of this kind of art.

Kara Walker

I find the work of this artist to be completely fascinating to me. Kara walker was born in Stockholm California in 1969. At the young age of three she realised that she wanted to an artist just like her father.  She graduated with a BFA and an MFA with a focus on print making and collage. Her works are potent, dealing a lot with race, sexuality, power and repression. I am attracted to her flawless use of multi media. And of course her cutouts. I would really like to take the cutout idea and use it more to my advantage in photography.

A couple of her own inspirations : Vincent Van Gogh and Andy Warhol.

Mike Mills

"There’s a carefully tended fuzziness to the movie itself, like a memento mori sketched in pastel. Part of that has to do with the nature of memory, or rather those shards of Oliver’s recollections that are continually bumping up against one another as the near-past triggers remembrances of things further past, sometimes with the neatness that distinguishes a meticulously constructed screenplay rather than messy life."

I watched a documentary called "Beautiful Mess" this evening  and found myself intrigued by one of the artists interviewed; Mike Mills. 

Mike mills has directed a movie/biography of his life called, "Beginners". This quote is from the website,

 http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/movies/beginners-with-christopher-plummer-and-ewan-mcgregor-review.html

I am intrigued because of Mills honest embarrassment when he talks about the making of the film. This is a true artist! I have to question the motives of any artist unless they reach that raw point in life where there is no where else to go, but the truth. I guess that means I need to question my own. And I love the way he describes how memories can be so fictitious.  


http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/03/16/movies/100000000728868/mike-mills.html?ref=movies

Caleb Cole

Here is a artist that uses his childhood experiences to inspire his work today. He literally loved junk as a child, due to his mothers own fascination of garage sales. And I can see this in a lot of his work.

 I am attracted to his work, simple because of the theatrical states that he puts himself in. ThoughI am annoyed also for it seems thought that some of his characters are too foreign to him as a person. I would rather see him exploring more natural circumstances. But maybe that is what he wants. Anyway, he has inspired me to move forward still in my own theatrics!

 http://www.calebcolephoto.com/biocv.html

Scanographers..

Yes it's true folks! To my delight I have the found the heroes of our time. THE SCANOGRAPHERS! So can I join their group?

This first website gives  links to many awesome artists. It's so fun to explore all of them.
http://scannography.org/artists/artists.html

My question is, what kind of scanners are they using? These look like studio shots

TINTIN

   I grew up reading the adventures of Tintin. As odd as it sounds, these books had a great influence on my youth. I wanted to be like him! I wanted to travel the world and be a reporter who cleaned up crime in my spare time! Well as we all know, it never turned out that way, and by the time I turned seventeen, my ageless hero was put back on the shelf and I became interested in other fictional characters, such as Nero Wolf.

But the art of Herge has always appealed to me. It holds simplicity in it's strong line, but it shakes with life and color. These books, were carefully drawn by Herge's  motley crew and then resized to fit newspaper standards of the early 20th century.

 

gathering material

For this first project, I wanted to take a different route then internet image pulling. Sure it would take less time, but I have no interest in using other peoples work in such a way for my own projects. So this past week I have been taking pictures of myself and of objects that are needed to complete this assignment. I want to make myself the star character in all of the stories! This is to create humor and also to tie the stories together. 

Urban Explorers

    I was given a book for Christmas called "Beauty in Decay II" filled with photos of old  buildings across the world that have been falling apart for lack of care and government abandonment. The photographers call themselves urban explorers, and and they find their medium to work with, by escaping police eye and trespassing on property. As far as I know these photos have not been tampered with, but for a disclaimer on my part, the book does not give a lot of factual detail of how the photos were taken, rather the book presides more the visual poetic side in order to induce the reader's empathy.
    I found the book to be startlingly beautiful and was gasping as I looked at old asylums that were shut down in the 1980s due to cutting costs in the British welfare systems. This was part of a plan that the British government was forming. They wanted to put the mentally disabled back in homes, and shut down the ever rising need to fuel these expensive institutions. So the buildings were left high and dry. I don't know much about this area of study, but these photographs have sparked an interest that I would love to continue to explore and research more on.

All Photography by: RomanyWG

First Try

watercolor in black and white? 

A little transparent

Trial

So this is pretty cool huh!