Lecture Matthew Crawford 040510

Put on by a joint effort between the Craft/Material Studies and Sculpture and Extended Media departments, this unique lecture was unlike the kind I've regularly attended during my time at VCU. Matthew B. Crawford the author of Shop Class as Soul Craft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, is also a Research Fellow at UVA and a Contributing Writer with The New Atlantis Magazine.

When showing his work there were photos of engines and engine troubles along with a could shots of the kind of motorcycles pictured above. After abandoning the world of political think tanks and corporate desk jobs Crawford has found intellectual satisfaction, physically rewarding work and the want to spread the word by learning the art of motorcycle restoration and maintenance and with it running his own shop.

Lecturing on the value of the labor arts, as mentally and physically demanding as any of the fine arts I've worked in, Crawford made a strong argument for the preservation of such skills. In the world of skilled manual labor there is a level of craft seen just as easily in the works of master painters as can be observed in the careful hand of an auto-mechanic or carpenter.

Crawford also expressed the idea that wrapped into the practices he described there are moral and ethical decisions as well. I very much agree that there is a responsibility social and otherwise within the world of any art, and appreciated his thoughts on the matter.

Hank Willis Thomas Lecture

image sourced from http://www.18thstreet.org/_archives/2007/crosssections/crosssections.jpg

Acting strongly within the situationist traditions of Détournement, the appropriating of images and symbols for the use of turning them back upon their related producers and proponents (such as corporations, governments, advertising campaigns, etc), Hank Willis Thomas creates biting work that serves to examine the relationship between Black Identity and corporate advertising. Much of Thomas' work could be identified as adbusting, a practice that has gained in popularity since the early 80's. In one work Thomas, takes the form of a Mastercard ad, introducing his own image from the funeral of his cousin who was killed by a youths mugging him for his gold chain. The work takes a commonly recognizable form and introduces to it text and imagery that asks the viewer to interpret the relationship between the text image and appropriated form. In handling often uncomfortable and brutal images and subject matter Thomas seems to maintain an element of humor in the process. A point that was very apparent in the lecture, and evident in his demeanor. What is most successful about his work, whatever form it takes, is Thomas' ability to cut right through the sheen of advertising and reveal the problems of authenticity and racism that lay just under the surface. I was surprised to learn that outside of one minor incident Thomas has never had issues with the companies who's advertising he appropriates. Often in my own work perhaps I have been unnecessarily concerned with possible legal issues surrounding the use of logos and appropriation of advertising or broadcast work. From the lecture I definitely gained a sense that one can be both bold and subtle at the same time when handling such controversial subject matter.

Alec Soth Lecture

Joshua, Angola State Prison, Louisiana 2002
(source: http://www.alecsoth.com/Mississippi-new/pages/frameset.html)

Born 1969, Minneapolis, Minnesota

In searching for new ways to authentically create works of photography Alec Soth employs a method of storytelling that may be next direction in photography. It was absolutely inspiring for me to see the embrace of such adventurous methods and the obvious joy taken by Soth in pursuit of his art. Focusing heavily on the expansion of William Eggleston's concept of the Democratic Forest (the idea that all subjects may be photographed and considered with equal weight) into that of the Democratic Jungle, Soth seeks to find a meaningful way to approach photography in the current image saturated environment. While his past work is connected with loose themes that developed over the course of many and repeated road trips, his more recent works focus on bringing together the art of storytelling and the art of photography. Series like "the most beautiful woman in georgia" or "the loneliest man in Missouri" take a on the literary tone of great road novels placing him in often strange situations while in search of his subjects. Soth's approach to the process of photography is one i might very well explore and if not in active practice his views and comments on the purpose of photography and documentation will stay with me for a long time.

Francis Cape Artist Lecture

Two of the above images represent the current installation titled "Waterline" currently on exhibit in VCU's Anderson gallery.

This lecture by sculptor Francis Cape began with one of his last graduate works involving cardboard boxes arranged on palettes concerning the transport of goods and their delivery methods equalized by the often present containers. His back ground is in wood work and fine restoration of several hundred year old wood work in his native England. Cape spent sometime discussing how we see and go through the process of seeing to sharing what we have seen as artists. Through his work with historic structures a key component of his work is the idea of the transience of objects. In the work Waterline and several other works within a similar vein he presents wood reproductions of the mass made "utilitarian furniture catalogue" a series of home furniture and storage pieces produced within England during world war II paired against photographs from Post Katrina New Orleans. In his piece Waterline the waynescoat represents the waterline found in the middle class neighborhoods he was shooting in. More images form Katrina and the waterline referred to in the installation are framed and hung above about head height. He works seeks to comment on the universality of the destruction caused by Katrina, it did not only happen to the most poor or the most rich but ot everyone within it's landfall.

Lecture Mary Scurlock, Diego Sanchez at the Page Bond Gallery

Mary Scurlock


Deigo Sanchez


Page Bond Gallery Nov. 17th 2009

Mary Scurlock
This work By Mary Scurlock represents a departure from her past works on paper. Working on paper for most of the past 25 years she had considered using panels but had never really explored their potential until now. She works on these panels by applying 5 or 6 layers of gesso then sanding and scratching back into the panels. Through out her process she adds layers of wax in with the oil paint and further develops the surface by way of automatic writing. Another aspect of these works is her use of a much more muted color palette. Her past worked was marked by brighter colors as well as a larger range of media used in developing her work. the images of trees follow a pattern of drawing from life and then moving in a direction more representative than realistic. She intends to continue working with these tree images and in this new direction.

Diego Sanchez
For the most part the work by Deigo Sanchez does not represent a departure from his past works. Still presenting images of the Colosseum, he has begun to add images of chairs found left out to the garbage as well as overpasses in an effort to uplift the locations and items in question to the level of importance represented by the Colosseum. His color palette is bright and his obsession with the surfaces of the work is clear as he invited the audience to touch and feel the paintings. In his process he paints complete back grounds and after considering the space decides on an images to paint over it. Additionally he paints no representational objects over the near completed works to slow the viewers assessment of the painting hoping to bring the viewer to consider the work in all of its complexity.

SHIMON ATTIE LECTURE

I really really enjoyed the Shimon Attie lecture on Wednesday. This year's lectures have proven to be the best series of lectures i've seen in the 4 and half years of art lectures i've attended at the school.

Since leaving grad school in 1991 Attie and completed between 20-25 major works in places as disparate as Berlin, New York, Copenhagen and Amber Van. The first images shown to us were of his series of projections in Berlin circa 1991. Just several years after the fall of the Berlin wall Attie plunged into research looking for street maps and archive photos of former Jewish places of residence and businesses pre- holocaust. He went on to project these images on top of the existing structures or approximately in the same locations. The powerful images join the world of the past and disappeared with the often crumbing architecture of the time. THis work takes the images of these locations and places the visual memory of the past in the context of the current landscape.

He went on to show images constructed into light boxes that were then lowered into the Copenhagen canals. these images which show a selection of photos mixing current refugees with images of the rescued Jews of Denmark layered against images of water borne craft uses the juxtaposition of past heroism against current social ills as an active challenge to the social policies in denmark concerning immigration and refugee assistance.
I find Attie's work to be interesting as it often engages with social history and current social issues in the same work joining our memory of the past or lack there of to the current situation in a way often challenging the viewer to consider the links and to become informed about the contrast of ideas.

Attie finished his lecture showing images and video from two projects both involving still subjects on moving platforms giving both motion and stillness to the subject matter. Using a similar process in both works Attie pursues different ends with each project. in one the project exists as a way to help the community of Amber Van to reclaim their identity alongside other Welsh towns and away from being constantly defined by the mining disaster that claimed the lives of some hundred of the town's children. In the other the memory of a racetrack is illustrated through the sites artifacts and persons who were drivers, regulars and technicians associated with the site.

Monday Artist BLOG // Brian Ulrich

Brian Ulrich's work explores our relationship to consumerism in the post 9/11 economic and social environment. His work uses the camera as a way to create a space in which the viewer can become critical of capital driven environments. While searching for a way to capture the the new social interactions that formed after 9/11 Ulrich was inspired to move indoors to retail spaces upon the "fight terror go shopping" moment. In photographing he found that rather than the interactions between people, the interactions between people and the products and spaces they engaged with were the most interesting relationships to examine. sometimes his work is exclusively about the retail spaces whether they are in use such as the shots taken inside home depot and target but in the more recent work he turns his camera toward the collapsing and abandoned architecture of former retail spaces.

I found his analytical statements about consumer culture and consumer spaces to be of great value to my work. In talking about retail spaces and his photographs of them he mentions how the architecture is designed to wear down the consumer, to make them feel small and to never allow them the space to engage critically with the environment. In his photographs the objects often become stand ins for people not within the frame documenting their traces left behind.

ARTIST BLOG PENELOPE UMBRICO

artist lecture was awesome!!!

I found some of the language she used to describe her work immediately interesting. In her process she talks about using fragments of other images to create a desired whole. I've been thinking about my project and the function of the photographs i'm taking as more relating to consumerism and the inherent violence of capitalism lately so the lecture she provided us really helped to move those thoughts forward.

Another phrase she used that i really latched onto was the"purgatory of consumerism" she used to refer to a series of works that are all slightly out of focus. she used the phrase in relation to the way consumerism places our consciousness in a frame of reference to objects and obscures our ability to see the whole picture clearly. Perhaps my photos can begin to function as a solution by placing the relationship we have with capital and consumerism in a clear image using the language of capitalism and fashion to deliver the content.

My favorite part of the lecture was when she went into detail about the series of mirrors. As part of her discussion of them she mentioned the idea that in the advertisements when looking at the mirrors the viewer becomes erased and replaced by objects for sale that appear in the viewers position within the environment.