Final Project- Ariel

Artists Statement: Hello everyone, meet Ariel. You might not have known that harpists name their harps. In fact, many instrumentalists I know name their instruments. Like you might bring a good friend into the studio and bring out their best characteristics, I have been wanting to bring Ariel into the studio. Though they may be inanimate objects to everyone else, for musicians their instruments take on a personified presence. They are our precious babies, our collaborators, and also our voice. Central to this series is a self-portrait which is the first time the instrument is recognizable in a fuller form as a representation of the reality that instruments only carry meaning in relation to the artists that work through them.  In a way, the whole project is a self-portrait, since the instrument is simply an extension of ourselves; and the qualities we love about our instrument are potential strengths that we cannot see as easily just in ourselves. 

Technically, this project also marked my first time using studio lighting. The process was very rewarding, but also more difficult that I had imagined. Creating the lighting that I envisioned took more rearranging and fiddling than I had anticipated. Figuring out what variables to change when seems like an art in itself that makes beautiful photographs, but it is a skill that I look forward to refining over time.




Some enlargements, out of scale:

                         

           

Nostalgia

Lightbulbs like this one found in a downtown coffee shop give me the same impression as walking through a dusty antique shop...with Instagram as just one example, we clearly like decor/photos/etc. etc.  that give us a feeling of cozy nostalgia. 

Project #2-Boxes + Clouds

Boxes + Clouds was driven by two specific experiences. First, since my freshman year my friend Mary and I began collecting letters, pictures, and charts of our pasts experiences in what we call the "Box of Shmeh." The name arose form a debate our group of friends had over whether boxes or clouds is the best metaphor for where we keep emotions. What Mary and I decided was that some things live in clouds, future hopes that are more ephemeral, but difficult issues that we deal with stay compartmentalized in boxes. Some days it takes more tape to keep the box shut, and other days we let ourselves open the box and shuffle through it, but most days our boxes stay "out of sight, out of mind" unassumingly tucked away. As my artist statement explains, my box holds the jumbled mix of memories and emotions-nostalgic memories of everyday items and inside jokes in a faded sepia, and cold symbols of isolation and negativity in black and white. I don't really have any pictures of me and my dad, so I did my best to recreate iconic images from places I can access.

Second, I wanted to explore the pressure I often feel from the art world to produce work that deals with heavy subject matter. I think work that addresses difficult social issues is important, and has the power to catalyze change; however, as an idealist I also feel strongly that people usually need more hope than reminders of the broken structures that lead to pain. With this work, I tried to reconcile this tension and show that both the light and heavy experiences in my life are important to me.

Some of the Box Photos:

 

Some of my screenshots of collections of pins:
   

Artists Statement:
"Where do you keep your most difficult memories or your lofty day dreams? I think the painful parts of our past often live in boxes-contained, quietly kept away from our everyday mental space. When we look to the future, we keep our "head in the clouds"that are filled with intangible, imagined ideas and desires. My box holds the estrangement of a parent due to alcoholism, and my clouds hold my collection of pins that reflect light, playfulness, faith, beauty, and simple everyday comfort that I aspire to create on a broader scale. Both our past and our future aspirations form who we are, and this work aims to show that they each deserve respected space." 

Signs of Spring

Every year around this time, I rush to document the first signs of spring after a grueling winter. To me they are simple, but cherished signs of renewed life.

Project #3- Lamberton

For our third project, we were promoted to represent a space that we like and given the opportunity to print in large format, specifically 44x44 inches. As everyone in Rochester knows, we had a particularly brutal winter this year. One place away from Eastman that has become very special to me is Lamberton Conservatory in Hyland Park. In the dead of winter, it feels so wonderful to step into the warm humid air and soak up the vibrant plant life.

I knew I wanted to play with a few inspirations in this project. 1) I wanted to mimic both the style of the artist I presented on earlier, Karl Blossfeldt, and an artist whose work I have loved for years, Steven N. Meyers. I love that the the work feels elegant and clean to me, highlighting the beautiful forms of the plants.

                           

 
I thought that this "scientific" aspect of their photography would mirror our printing format, since I associate squares with math and ideals of perfections. This affected how I arranged my photos. I originally had a vision of sm

aller squares framing progressively larger squares which you can see in some of the sketches below. I ended up settling on just resizing the original rectangular format in most photos, but I still I kept them within their rigid frames.

                                           

With floral photography, I am most captivated when the flowers look luminous because of how they are backlit. Overall, I was thinking of creating the effect of a mosaic. I spent a lot of time making seams transition so that if you blurred your eyes you might also get a surreal effect.

Diamonds

"Diamonds" by Johnnyswim

"In the wake of every heartache, in the depth of every fear, there are diamonds waiting to break out of here."

We carry around our worry, stressors, and burdens like stones that weigh on our minds. Break out the gem, the lesson, the beauty inside each stone and leave the rest behind and be free.

Aims of Ambiguity

This post covers a topic that I've been mulling in different contexts for years...so bear with me as I try to cover a lot of contextual ground...

Last year on my plane home for Winter Break, I happened upon one of those rare conversations with the stranger sitting next to me that was particularly memorable and inspirational. As introductions progressed and I talked about my two degrees, Digital Media Studies and Harp Performance, and how I hope to bring visual media to classical music and via storytelling engage a broader audience in the narratives that already live inside performers' minds. It turned out that my new companion had a varied background as well. Mr. Dangerfield started out studying jazz piano, but then went on to architecture school. His current job was working for a company called The Brand Experience; their clients are companies who ask ask for an experience for their customers that sells the story of the brand. Our conversation meandered across many different topics, but one of Mr. Dangerfield's statements that impacted me most was that he found across every expression of the arts- from music, to theatre, to visual media, there are about ten characteristics/goals that connect them all. I haven't figured out what all ten are yet, but I think one is the spectrum of complexity.

In a course I took last spring, Music and the Mind, we talked about complexity and preference falling along a hedonic curve. You can read about this theory in more detail here, http://www.intropsych.com/ch09_motivation/complexity_and_preference_a_hedgehog_theory.html, but the jist is that there is a sweet spot for individuals of complexity that they find enjoyable- too simple and the content is boring, too complex and it is overwhelming. The more familiarity increases, the more complexity is needed to provide the same amount of enjoyment. Classical music today struggles with how to appeal to two audiences simultaneously. Orchestras have to plan programs that appeal to both the well-versed patrons with high familiarity, but with continued funding crises they also have to draw in new audiences with no familiarity.

 As I've ventured into the visual arts this year, I've found that this concept has recurred in critical feedback I've received from my peers and professors. It would seem that most people enjoy when an image is not immediately clear to them, and they have to work at interpretation. In yet another parallel, this seems to echo McLuhan's theories of hot and cold media, promoting that media that give less meaningful information are more engaging. My first photography professor said work that is too straightforward is "too heavy handed." I thought about this balance leading up to my final project in particular, and here are some images that I ended up leaving out of my series in favor of others that were a bit more opaque.

More...

  

Or less?

So maybe as the saying goes less is more. I think both are beautiful, it just depends what affect and audience you're aiming for.