First Friday 5/1

I went and viewed the 'Rooted' show at Quirk Gallery, by Rita and Erin Root. My interpretation of this artwork was more or less impressed. I enjoyed the paintings of horses as they became more abstract throughout the show. I felt as though some of the portraits of these horses were a little repetitive by nature, and being somebody who has no experience with horses, I felt I interpreted the emotions of these large animals differently than the artist. In some respects, I can understand how these animals can be large and beautiful, but also after my experiences visiting rural Vermont numerous occasions throughout my lifetime, I view horses with a negative and smelly connotation. My experiences in Vermont allowed me to connect with the other work of decomposing animal parts because I witnessed many of these subjects first hands in the woods. I enjoyed the large beeswax sculpture of the deer head and thought much about it's presentation and why it was chosen to be as it was. Overall I felt a lot of animosity between the two sets of work, the beauty and the decomposition of animals, and yet I thought the show was cohesive and entertaining for the most part.

Photographer's Forum Submission

"Interstitial" Hassan Pitts

At first I believe I found “Interstitial” was rather terrifying in a sense, I never knew shaving could be so intense. I found myself captivated and although some could consider the content pointless, I also found myself trying to figure out the meaning behind this piece. I alleviated my curiosity by concluding the message I get from “Interstitial” has to involve personal identity and your emotions about identity as expressed by the staggering drone. Which leads me to my comment about how much I enjoyed watching your work, and enjoyed it’s environment placed in the little room upstairs. Being able to view a work isolated with the stereo blasting was an experience. I was impressed by the technical work overall and admire your audacity to be in front of the camera. As an artist I can find it offensive to have to give away the meaning behind a piece of work sometimes, but rather I hope you’ll find it complimentary that my curiosity is overwhelmed by your work and allow yourself to share with me your intent and inspiration behind “Interstitial”.

"Artist Statement"

I have decided that at this point in my artistic career, I have no personal statements yet to make as an artist. I do recognize my influences and inspirations as an artist define the style of photography I create and prefer to enjoy. Personally I strive to photograph subjects that might seem ignored or overlooked on a daily basis, mostly focusing on found objects or scenes that are un-manipulated or posed for my compositions. I tend to alter subjects only if necessary, but prefer to leave them as they existed before I discovered them. My artwork offers my viewers a substantial amount of depth; with black and white photography I tend to present a broad range of gray scale with high contrast, and in color digital photography I usually generate very manipulated photographs with tonal overlays. In all of my work I am generally attracted to my subject by it’s appealing textures or the way sunlight/artificial light is cast. To reiterate, I have not yet limited myself to a particular focus in photography, since I’m still studying it’s practice I expect my personal agenda with photography will develop into a much stronger statement in my future.

First Friday 4/3

Although, once again I was unable to attend the actual First Friday ceremony, I visited three of the galleries on Saturday, the Art 6 (which had the high school juried works), Visual art gallery (Out of the Shadows paintings by Chris Semtner), and the Klutch gallery (invasive spaces).
As far as the high school juried show at Art 6, I was thoroughly impressed by some of the quality work that was being produced, although that can’t be said for all of pieces. Many felt very unfinished and poorly crafted and the ideas were a little undeveloped in my opinion. The works that I did enjoy a lot were by Joe Riley, who did a majority of the large spray painted portraits. I felt as though there was a lot of dedication and creativity within the layers of spray paint, color choices and the positioning of stencils for a strong composition. Another work I enjoyed was the India ink work by Alicia Hagy, the emotion behind the each pen stroke was overbearing and I thought the immense amount of work was outstanding and inspired alone by that fact. It was interesting to view the levels of dedication for high school students in art classes since it wasn’t long ago I was in the same position. To be honest, I was just as amused by the poorly crafted or presented art now as I was in high school though.
After that I visited the Visual Art Gallery, I liked a good majority of the Out of the Shadows paintings mostly because of my high appreciation for exquisite paintings. Heads was my favorite, I thought the arrangement and overall composition along with the tonal colors used for the skin in the shadows and light was overwhelming. I really liked studying the paintings up close and noticing the range of colors used and then viewing from a far how they play in the light he created. The other paintings in back gallery by Sally Valentine were most inspiring to me. I really like abstract painting and when I was younger did a lot of splatter canvas painting. I really connected and enjoyed her version of the Jackson Pollack type style. That kind of art is definitely something I would consider purchasing and thought it was very imaginative.
The last gallery was Klutch, where there was a series of tessellation like artwork that was very inspiring and innovative. I liked the narrative and theme throughout the works and enjoyed being able to walk through and experience each frame of art. I really like the kind of alien characters the artist creates and these moods or atmospheres in which they are surrounded. I enjoy the cartoon element to the subject as well as the mediums that art used to create that sense of cartoon/street spray paint feeling.
Overall I was thoroughly impressed with the galleries I visited and I was happy to view all of the artwork in a calm and quiet setting. I was able to focus on each piece as well as getting close enough or far enough away for peek visual interest.

Sametime 1:04

I think that because the Sametime 1:04 project is too directly inspired by it’s main influence, it’s overall concept is repetitive and it’s purpose is incoherent to me. Just because the time in which the photographs were collected is different doesn’t give the project enough significance in the conceptual differences. In my opinion, when projects are re-created or re-interpreted it is important for the difference between interpretations have conceptually different goals to achieve. There are plenty of different ways to have re-created the Sametime 7:15 idea into a new realm of observation. The photographs themselves are pure documentation, which I find personally boring because it’s too closely related to my own day to day life. I also find it annoyingly exhausting that the documentation is daily and the participants lives’ intertwine so connectively that the randomness of the documentation is dry. Basically, I feel it is a tedious project that may only be respected because of the dedication and not scrutinized for it’s lack of imagination.

First Friday 3/6

Although I was not able to attend the First Friday festivities, I visited a couple of galleries the previous day. The quirk gallery had a very interesting display of fashion cut out arms and legs that were arranged into various pieces of art. I preferred the larger paintings over the more sculptural pieces, although the model of all the legs in a sort of wiggly circle was very well constructed for using paper as a medium. At first when I viewed it I thought about how much more tedious it would have been to have cut out those legs in metal instead of paper. It could have been because there were fashion sketches involved, but the entire show felt like a sketch within itself. I feel like the concept could have produced something much more substantial. Individually I think each piece of artwork would be graphically interesting to stand on it’s own, but I really enjoyed the show in it’s collaborative entirety.