Interpretation Assignment

Made By a Man is a exhibition created by J. Casey Doyle. His exhibit includes 7 large pieces of artwork. All made out of different bright colors and thin ribbon that you would use to wrap a present. There are two blue pieces, two pink pieces, one green, white, and purple piece. They are all hanging up against walls, while one of the pink pieces is draped over a wall and one of the blue pieces is hanging from the ceiling. Most of the pieces look like blankets from far away, and the blue piece that hangs from the ceiling has delicate, large squares knitted into it, making it look like a quilt. 

Unfortunately, I was not able to attend his lecture about his work, so I feel like I missed out on a lot of information that would make this interpretation more successful. Just by looking at his artwork, I was not really able to conclude any biological information. One piece of artwork that stuck out to me was called Beauty. To me, this piece of work is trying to contradict the stereotypes that are mixed in with gender roles. This artwork represent a quilt, made by a man. I think society normally views women as the creator of objects like quilts and other crafts. We normally never hear about a man sitting down and knitting anything. I feel like this exhibit can be addressed to anyone who might be nervous to follow their dreams because it may look frowned upon or go against what is "normal". 

I found this exhibit to be quite confusing. It was very hard for me because I did not get a chance to attend J. Casey Doyle's lecture so I feel like I missed out on a lot of important information that would have helped me understand his art better. To me, the exhibit just looked like a bunch of blankets, and it was hard to find "meaning" behind everything. However, I can very much appreciate all the hard work he put into his exhibit. I cannot even imagine how frustrated and tired he must have been making all these interesting pieces. I admire his perseverance and patience, as I know I would never be able to do something as marvelous as this. 

Final Project ( forgot to post this earlier)

The concept of my final project is to capture the details/textures of everyday objects that we have a tendency of ignoring. I want to capture the "beauty" in places that we wouldn't think of looking at. This whole concept began to interest me when I saw American Beauty of few months ago. The whole theme of the movie is "to look closer". Ricky Fitts, on of the characters in the movie, video tapes everyday objects. While everyone thinks he's a basket case for finding things like birds and plastic bags beautiful, he doesn't understand why more people do not take the time to stop and appreciate the world that surrounds us.

I plan to explore this concept by taking up close pictures of objects that we don't really notice. I want to capture the detail and texture that we don't think twice about. I want about half the pictures to be everyday objects and the other half to be things outside, like plants or animals. I don't expect everyone to find every picture beautiful because we all have different opinions and views. But I want people to stop for a minute and think "wow, I never really noticed all the small things around me". I plan on printing this on regular photo paper and in color.

Work in Progress!

The idea of my project is to capture the detail and texture of everyday objects that we hardly ever notice. So far I have only take pictures of objects indoors but I'm planning on going outdoors and taking up close pictures of nature and anything we might miss with just a naked eye. I'm planning on printing them on regular photo paper and then displaying them in the frames that Mrs. Shannon showed us during class. If anyone has any suggestions of what I should photograph or what I should print my photos on please let me know!

The Crisis of the Real

1) According the Andy Grundberg's essay "The Crisis of the Real", postmodernism is a demonstration of abstract concerns of intellectuals. Or in Grundberg's exact words "... in short, postmodernism, in its art and its theory, is a reflection of the conditions of our time" (165). When postmodernism first hit the artist world in the early 20th century, it greatly affected architecture. "Architects had a very specific and clearly defined target in mind: 'less is more'" (165). To most architect postmodernism meant using stylish flourishes and no rules to create "free" and "no worry"art. In my opinion, postmodernism is taking a problem, event, or trend in current society and turning it into art in order for people to look at the situation through a different view. It could be making fun of something, rebelling against it, or simply bringing awareness to it. 

2) One way postmodernism challenged traditional photography practices was mixing photography with other forms of art. In the 70s, many artists started mixing photography and video, then combined it with media. In my own words, postmodernism photography was in a way about capturing the "raw truth". Many of the aspects of traditional photography were completely disregarded when it comes to postmodernism photography. Perfect lighting, shutter and aperture speed, poses, and appearance was all forgotten. The main focus of postmodernism photography was to capture the thing itself, right when it was in its element. This doesn't mean postmodernism photographers were not creative. They were constantly coming up with ideas about how to project what they captured on film. Some artists even took photographs of other peoples' pictures. Artists went out of their comfort zone and started exploring the new and different ways to photograph. The beautiful, yet at times frustrating thing about postmodernism photographs is that the meaning of many of them is what you come up with when you view them. When you look at a traditional photograph you are able to almost immediately tell what the photograph is trying to portray. Unlike traditional photography, postmodern photography can be confusing and multiple meaning-or none at all. 

Shirley

My project is inspired by the ghost that haunts mine and my roommates apartment. Her name is Shirley and she is our age. Within the first weeks of living there, we noticed really strange things happening. We told our RAs about the disturbances and they told us that a girl actually died there a few years ago. I have never believed in the supernatural, but ever since I moved into the apartment I am beginning to think that the dead might be able to communicate with us. It's very ironic that I chose to do to a creepy project because I HATE scary things.

I am trying to communicate a very creepy and threatening message through my pictures. I want the viewer to feel disturbed and scared. I want to make people wonder what else could be living with us that we don't even see. With the pictures that have other people in them, I decided to make the scene large because I wanted it to look like they were doing normal activities with a ghost in the background. So at first glance, maybe the viewer doesn't notice the girl sitting on the ground or standing next to the woman. 

My ideas did not really change while shooting this project. At first I wanted to come off as a peaceful kind of "soft" ghost, but once I got really into it I wanted to be more creepy and "violent". I didn't use the flash for this project at all because I wanted everything to look natural and I had it on a longer shutter speed. I posted these image in an order to make it look like I was moving through the house, starting off my standing in the window. Unfortunately, I took a lot of good photos that I could have used but I think that these ones were the best. It was really hard to narrow it down so I hope that these eight can tell the story successfully.