Reading List

Promising to read something someone recommends to me. I'll get it done some day.

The Inhuman by Lyotard. Essays on Barnett Newman.

A Long Email About Feelings, and Art, and Confusing Questions, and Awkward Silences.

Hi everyone.

I felt really bad today in class, and afterwards. I did have a really good discussion with Noelle and Sara after everyone else left, and a fairly long one with Sara until we both had to go do other things. It was so much more productive and I felt more able to open up. I don't mean that I felt bad physically and that's an excuse for how I acted today in class, and have likely acted previously. I mean that I feel bad about acting that way and not responding better to you all. I'm not sure how to engage in a productive discussion in class right now. It's bothering me, and it's making me feel like I'm letting you all down. I hope I'm at least being able to offer something to discussions about your work, but discussing my work in class is just not working.

Seminar, both semesters but especially this semester, has been the worst class for me. I'm getting to where I pretty much dread seminar and wait for my time discussing to be over so I can focus on other people's work, or on other classes. And since seminar should be the most important part of the semester, that's not a good way to feel.

You're all being great, and so supportive, but I'm not living up to it.

I'm not bringing in the work I am doing, and haven't raised the topic of my blog before because that work is really about teaching. It's about maybe discovering a better tool for MFA-work, but probably not. My chemical experiments with salt prints, exploring lumen papers, understanding anthotypes, writing the blog, doing videos.. that's education. That's writing a book, making a presentation, designing a workshop. That's what I've been doing for six years. That's what I love, it's what makes me happy and makes me engaged and passionate. But that's not being a visual artist. That's being a teacher and an educator. An artist can be an educator, but they have to educate through the medium of visual arts or they're not being an artist.

I think a lot of my problem is that I'm trying to re-learn how to be an artist first. I'm trying to get away from teaching, or section it off. But it's what I'm doing, because I haven't figure out how to art in the right way yet. Since September, I've been producing barely any work. What I have produced has been, almost exclusively, experiments. 

So when I'm silent in class, and I don't respond to what you say, please forgive me. I am hearing it, and listening to it, and trying to process it. I just don't know how to respond because it feels like the wrong conversation. And I can't seem to start the right conversation. That's why I've been reluctant to bring in work, or discuss too much about what's going on. I'm trying to be an artist again, and it's challenging. I don't want to go down the wrong roads, which seemed to be all that happened last semester. Just a big, long series of wrong turns. Which unfortunately feels all too often like it describes everything I've been doing since September.

I'm going to try to do better, making work and responding in class. I hope you'll bear with me. You've all been so fantastically supportive, and the questions you have are all the ones I have. You're asking where the concept and content is, what form it's going to take, and that's what I'm wondering. I'm trying to find the art, and I haven't found it yet. I think maybe I can see some of it, now that I'm starting to think about it this way. And our discussions in class have helped in some ways.

There's probably a lot more to say, but I've said a lot already. Thank you for trying to help me, and for everything you're giving me. I'm sorry I'm not dealing with it well. I don't know why I can discuss it five minutes after class, but not in class. None of you is making me feel attacked, you're all very kind and helpful.

I don't have any answers. Just a lot of questions, and a lot of things that haven't worked and I don't want to repeat. I'll try to be better. I have to find a way to be an artist again, because that's what seems to be missing. I came to grad school so I could be a teacher, but to do that, I have to be an artist first. Thank you all again.

I came to grad school so I could be a teacher, but to do that, I have to be an artist first. 

I think a lot of my problem is that I'm trying to re-learn how to be an artist first. I'm trying to get away from teaching, or section it off. But it's what I'm doing, because I haven't figure out how to art in the right way yet. Since September, I've been producing barely any work. What I have produced has been, almost exclusively, experiments.  

My chemical experiments with salt prints, exploring lumen papers, understanding anthotypes, writing the blog, doing videos.. that's education. That's writing a book, making a presentation, designing a workshop. That's what I've been doing for six years. That's what I love, it's what makes me happy and makes me engaged and passionate. But that's not being a visual artist. That's being a teacher and an educator. An artist can be an educator, but they have to educate through the medium of visual arts or they're not being an artist.

I came to grad school so I could be a teacher, but to do that, I have to be an artist first.

Erin Shirreff

A name in class today was Erin Shirreff, who does large format cyanotypes. I'm having trouble finding any information about her cyanotypes, though. I'm mostly finding older work that's much more performative. I'll have to dig a bit.

Teaching Theory Pt 1

Some terms and people to look up regarding teaching strategies and philosophies. I've been encouraged to tie my teaching philosophy and my work together. It makes sense, in a practice what you preach way, but I'm not sure all my art needs to be directly reflective of my approach to education. Despite how much folks up here seem to be in love with the word "didactic" I don't get the feeling that education and fine art fit together very well at the academic art table. Meh, not new. That aside, good material and good discussion. Very enjoyable class so far.

Lev Vygotsky, social learning psychologist and educational theory.
Constructivism as a theory of education.
Jean Piaget, child psychology.
Maxine Greene, educational philosopher dealing with aesthetic education.
Joseph Beuys, artist concerned with social experience.

Excerpt From An Email

"What I do specifically is make salt print photograms of living plants, which decay during the very long exposures. As the plants break down, they release moisture and chemicals into the emulsion that cause the salts to change color. The breakdown of the plant helps shape the image just as much as the light from the sun, or the humidity from the environment. Once the plant has completely desiccated, I remove it from the paper and allow the paper to continue to degrade. I don't fix the images. During the whole process, I'm making scans of the images as they change and break down.

I want the work to be about the process of breakdown and transformation. The plants are breaking down, releasing elements and chemistry that causes something new to be created. At the same time, that newly created image has already started to transform. Without it being fixed, it will continue until the image is entirely lost and all that's left is a (pretty much) blank chemical stain.

[Another student] asked how I think that idea related to concepts of veracity and indexicality (index came up a LOT in my first jury), but I'm not sure how to articulate that. In seminar, I have a lot of trouble with the discussion getting stuck on how I'm too process-oriented and not focused enough on content and concept. But for me, that process and chemistry is the content. I'd just like an outside opinion on where I am and if I'm making sense or running in circles." 

Recording The Exposure?

What if I stop caring so much about the detail in my prints? I could make my work a lot more about the passage of time and the chemical reactions by documenting the reactions happening during the breakdown of the organic material. I just wouldn't be able to re-register everything exactly. But I should be able to get fairly close to registering everything, and that might still work.

Basically, if I don't concern myself with perfect detail, I can take a print that's exposing for (say) two days. And during that two day exposure, I could make four scans of it, showing the actual exposure process. Then, when it's done, I can make another scan of the "final" exposure. And then continue to scan the print as it decays, after the organic material has finished desiccating.

In this print (above), I scanned the image after a short exposure, then loaded it back into the frame just to see what would happen. I had no expectations of getting a good image, so I just figured "what the hell?" and let it go. And I got something amazing. So I seriously regret is the huge jump between the first scan and the second. There's so much interesting stuff happening that I missed!! And that, I think, could be really important to include. Maybe even the artifacts of disassembly, scanning and re-assembly can become part of the work? They'll reflect the process in the final product. But the product will actually be the compiled and (somehow) displayed collection of scans. Not the blackened paper at the end of the silver decay.

Yes? Maybe!

Not Been Feeling It

I've been falling victim to my constant grad school woe of late, Spiders. I've been spending way too much time thinking about why I'm working, and not working. Admittedly, I've also been doing a lot of reading (which has been good!) but I haven't made any new prints other than test strips. That's not good, and it's starting to get to me. I'm feeling down and unaccomplished. I've actually felt this way... uh, pretty much since I started grad school. There was a little bit of excitement in November, but that faded away pretty fast and I'm back to spinning my wheels.

Basically, I know what I want to do. I know why I find it interesting. I know why I'm making the choices I'm making. I know that this is something that fascinates me, that it's the result of many different influences that are all extremely important to me and draw from a lot of different aspects of my life and the cultures I've been surrounded by and been part of. My problem is in communicating that to others in a way that is clear and concise, and fits into the current narrative surrounding contemporary visual arts. That problem is what's stumping me and making me wonder if I even want to be part of contemporary visual arts. Because it seems a lot like contemporary visual arts isn't interested in what I want to share. Hell, it felt like that sometimes in undergrad, too. It probably feels like that for all artists.

So, I've got two choices. I can either continue with what makes me want to be an artist, doing my work despite a deafeningly underwhelming reception of my core motivations, or I can give up and scrap everything I've been working on for six years in favor of something that fits better with what other people want me to be.

I'm pretty sure that I want to say "fuck you" to that second option. But, then again, I really want not to have wasted tens of thousands of dollars, mortgaged my future, invested years of effort, left behind the beginnings of a career that I love dearly, and generally accept a huge blow to my identity and life path. I mean, who really needs integrity or dreams, right? People trade those away for a living all the time.

Yeah, I need to get back to making art. I'm getting maudlin as fuck. Screw these expectations. They can wait until I've got more shit finished.


(Will also accept third choices, btw. Just haven't found any.)

Adam Fuss

"Love" by Adam Fuss. 1992.

A library patron stopped by the circulation to discuss my work. He's also in Sunanda's class with me, and I'd mentioned doing alternative processes in a discussion when the subject of historical photography came up in class. We spent a bit discussing salt prints and lumen prints, talking about what kind of work I'm doing and why he was interested. Apparently he's doing lumen prints and is trying to understand the process a bit better, and how to handle the prints for long term storage.

After looking at some of my work, he suggested I look up Adam Fuss, so I did. I recall seeing some of his photograms during the class trip to NYC, but I wasn't really amazed by what I saw back then. I'm not really amazed by what I see doing some research on him now. I like the idea of the subject interacting directly with the photo-reactive medium, but not so much the end result of his work. I'm also blown over by his theoretical basis, either.

Still, it's good to look at people that aren't bang on with what you want. They're a bit off, not quite thrilling, but there's still things you can take away from them. Fuss doesn't do long exposures, quite unusual for photograms. Instead he uses very powerful strobes to create the exposures. For his Intestines series, he does leave the material (guts, blood, etc) in place on the photo paper for a long time, allowing the paper to react to the material, but the exposure itself is quite fast. That's an interesting approach.

Brittany Nelson: Science!

The artist with her work, from her website.

When I was attending SPESE 2014, hosted by East Carolina University, I saw a lecture that was simply called "Science!" and knew I had to attend.

The artist was Brittany Nelson, and her work captivated me. She does non-representational photochemical work, creating chemigrams and mordançage images that include a wide array of chemicals from the history of photography. At her lecture, she spoke with great passion about her work and the exploration of photochemistry not only as a medium, but a subject matter. I was able to ask several questions and get some valuable insight. She continues to be a big inspiration for me, and a reminder that my kind of work can and does succeed.

Here's a lovely article about her. And here's her website.

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?

The Enlightenment was a weird time. We owe practically all of modern civilization to Enlightenment-era ideas, but it created a whole mess of problems. This book starts off by reminding you that until the Enlightenment, the authority on how to classify life forms was Aristotle. And that's actually true for a lot of things. Ancient Greek philosophers were acknowledged experts for thousands of years. What sort of a comment is that on society between Hellenism and Enlightenment?

Of course, the only reason that could be a negative comment is because of Enlightenment. Fun!

I haven't finished the book. I'm like a fifth of the way in, actually. But the title itself is what caught my eye. Enlightenment disrupted the idea of a natural order and challenged many assumptions about how reality works. It broke up the idea of an ordained order in nature and that challenged the idea of an ordained order in society. But Enlightenment was still all about putting things in boxes.

Anyway, here's a link to the book's publisher's site.

Light, Paper, Process

This is a new book that's arrived in the library. I checked it out the first day it was on the shelf, read five pages, and then forgot about it. But then I found an article about it over here. And now I want to get the book again and actually read it.

"Perfection is boring. A new exhibition presents the work of seven photographers who celebrate experiment and chance

"Documenting the world is only one way of using photography,” said Virginia Heckert, head of the Museum’s Department of Photographs and curator of Light, Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography. “Other photographers go into the darkroom and experiment. They push the medium to its limits, taking advantage of what others might see as mistakes.”

The seven artists represented in Light, Paper, Process make experiment and chance visible in their work, combining these with the traditional materials of photography: light-sensitive emulsions, paper, chemical development. “These are artists who embrace challenges not as limitations,” Virginia explained, “but as opportunities to work in the same experimental spirit that led to the invention of the medium.”

See? Totally up my alley. EDIT: Oooh, nice, there's a website for the exhibition! LINK.