Anna's Exhibit!

Our one and only Anna Rotty is having an exhibit of her fabulous work!
Check it out if you have a chance to get to Amherst. This work is really interesting and is a very unique style of photography.

The show is called Crossing Boundaries: A collaborative exhibition of works by Ani Rivera and Anna Rotty

 The show intends to address techniques and photographic process through intergenerational perspectives. The show represents a variety of photographic based work, connecting analog and digital processes along with mixed media. This exhibition hopes to exemplify today’s expanding definition of the photographic image. An interactive performance piece will be held during the reception from 5-8.

Photo by Ani Rivera

Photo by Anna Rotty

Lights! Camera! Youth! Action!

These are the cards advertising YOUR amazing photography, YOUR radical murals, YOUR brilliant ideas, YOUR fabulous poetry and OUR work together as a group and an organization!

We'll talk about the logistics of transportation today in group.

CLICK HERE to view the full invitation for the show.

Just a good message.

I can't remember where I found this, but I think it's a good message none the less.

Ken Brown

Hey Ladies,

Anna and I have been framing your BEAUTIFUL photos all day - the show is going to be amazing! If you have any final photos that you'd like to include in the exhibit please bring them in tomorrow.


Below are photos from an artists named Ken Brown. HERE is the link to his website. In addition to doing a lot of cartoon work he spends a lot of time wandering around NYC with a camera, making photos at every chance he gets. He often works along a single theme, finding similarities in signs, window displays, billboards and graffiti. Every Monday he posts on his blog/e-mails out a new list of photos for the week.

I love the way he uses scale and reflection to add a playful element to his work.

Hopefully taking a glance at these will inspire you to get out a make some photos during the remaining hours of daylight today!

Check it out.........!!!!!!!!!

I think you all will LOVE this.

Post from Crystal

Hey, ladies! During our meeting on Monday, I really enjoyed seeing the work that
Jazmin and Kayleigh did working with images that had a kind of “ghostly” quality
to them. It reminded me of a piece I did a few years ago, a collage and
self-portrait that I did in front a church door. I used a lot of Photoshop to
create this image, playing with saturation, opacity, and gradients. What kind
of cool ghostly art do you think you could do in Photoshop?

Fireflies -

Take a look at these long exposure images that were made in Japan. HERE is the link if you'd like to see more of them.

 

What do you think? Should we do some long exposure images? I love how much depth there is to these photos, I feel as though I could just leap into them!

Oh wow wow - nice work on Wednesday.

Ladies - I adore the prayer flags you made for MLKjr day/broader visions of an equality-filled world.
Absolutely LOVE what you've done here. See you tomorrow, be prepared to print photos, write some poems and work on our alternative map of Ware!

Post from Crystal!

Hey there, ladies! I wanted to show you this cool photographer who takes lots of
pictures and then merges them all together. His name is Pep Ventosa and he's a
Spanish photographer who likes to play with ideas of reconstructing and
deconstructing normal images. Here are a few pictures from his series called
"In The Rounds." He did two sets of these, one of trees and one of carousels.
Notice how the pictures look surreal and almost like a painting. This comes
from laying all the images on top of each other, creating almost a ghostly
scene.

And here's the link to his website! http://www.pepventosa.com

10 less heard MLKjr quotes.

 Hey Gals - This post if from feministing,  a great blog that I love reading. They ran this video yesterday and I thought I would share it with you. I've included a transcript of it below.
See you tomorrow!

1. (screen: on creativity) Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively mal-adjusted.
2. (screen: on creativity) Almost [almost, almost] always the creative [the creative] dedicated minority has made the world better.
3. (screen: on selfishness) An individual has not started living, until he can rise [rise] above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns, to the broader concerns of all humanity.
4. (screen: on forgiveness) We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.
5. (screen: on selfishness) Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism, or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
6. (screen: as quoted by rage against the machine)A riot at bottom is the language of the unheard.
7. (screen: on america’s power) Don’t let anyone make you think God chose America as his divine messianic force, to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. I can hear God saying to America, “You are too arrogant, and if you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn’t even know my name.”
8. (screen: on war) I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of this nation, the great initiative in this war was ours. The initiative to stop it, must be ours.
9. (screen: on military) A nation that continues to spend more on military defense, than on programs of social uplift, is approaching spiritual death.
10. (screen: on love and power) What is needed is a realization that power without love [power without love] is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. And justice at it’s best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

Today

Post from Anna

Hey Girls!

I came across some artwork from a past group exhibition by some awesome female artists called Fibre Femmes. It was an all female "stencil artist" show in Melbourne, Australia. They all make public art pieces of different subject matters and styles but I thought it was really inspiring that there work is out on the streets for everyone to see! I thought it was really interesting to see the final product, but also to think about the process each of the artists took to get there. One artist in particular, called Fresh Chop, uses photographs and pastes them onto different textures like walls or concrete spaces on the streets. In an excerpt from an interview she mentions how great it was to work with such a unique group of women who have all different styles but are working in a similar way. It reminded me of you all at GEV. Check it out!

Anna

 

 http://www.invurt.com/2011/05/25/interview-fibre-femmes-fresh-chop/

GEV! You GIRLS are great!

G.E.V.! Body Sculpture

Trailer for The Artist

Hey Gals - take a look...........

Post from Kailey

What I like about this picture is just how it’s such a basic thing, but it can become so interesting. Its like, no one really knows what “79 #1 Buzz” means, but it just looks interesting. I love the look of old, worn down schools, so this chair really caught my eye. It may seem silly to a lot of people that I am interested in a chair, but that’s just me!!! =)

Photo by Jazmin

Poem by Crystal

As a part of our map of Ware we'll be writing poems along this format. Here is an example from Crystal

I come from Berkshire County

Where children are chained to their families, and escape is sweet and seldom.

I escape only to be pulled “home”

I believe in doing more than dreaming

Because you have to jump, scared or not, to get anywhere but stuck.

I escape to dream some more.

Post from Anna (Of her work by her Mama)!

Hello ladies!

I wanted to show you an example of some artwork that incorporates photographic images into a mixed media artwork and who better to use than my own mother's work! These are some mixed media images that she made recently about personal mapping and histories and identity. For many of them she used old family portraits or photos of herself as a child and blended them into paint and other textures etc. Here is part of her artist statement for this body of work. I thought these would be good for you to see because they are about personal mapping, like our map of Ware project and show a really beautiful way of using photographs in a collage form. 

Eileen Rotty's Statement...

"Each piece of art that I make is a thread in the tapestry that defines me; a tapestry composed of memories, moments and experiences that somehow demonstrate my personal history. It is this history that has shaped me as an artist and continues to provide a wellspring of material and subject matter that I need to produce art. It's a way to tell a story, to explain the unexplainable and to make sense of the incongruous".

What do you think about them? Do you think each one tells the whole story or a part of a story? What do you think about they way text and symbols are used along with images and paint within the same canvas? Does this give you any ideas for materials you can use in your own mapping project?

See you TOMORROW!!

Hey Gals -

I hope you have all had a great weekend! Just a reminder that we are meeting tomorrow in room 208F. Bring your bubbly selves and your cameras - also if you have a friend who might like to join bring them along too!

PS. HERE is the link to an article on Eve Arnold - a great photographer who died last week at the age of 99.

Take a look at her photos, they are truly remarkable. Just imagine how much she saw and experienced over her 99 years. What kinds of photos do you think you'll make when you are 20? 45? 80? 99?

Photos vs. Paintings: What makes Fine Art?

Today we'll be jumping right into the thick of it all by going some program basics (who we are, what we do etc...) and will then start talking about what makes photography similar to and different from other art forms you may already be familiar with/practice on a regular basis.

What do you all think about these photos from the Remake Project? We actually did something similar to this last fall when we remade iconic American photographs ourselves. What do you think these images show about the similarities and differences between photos and paintings? What different types of photography styles and functions are you familiar with? How do these photo and painting duos factor in to those familiarities?

See you soon!

REMEMBER!!!!

Hey Gals -

I'm totally jazzed to see you tomorrow! 

Please bring any GEV cameras that you have at home to our FIRST MEETING OF 2012 at 2:30pm on Wednesday, January 4th.

http://aconversationoncool.tumblr.com/

Domestc Lives - A View from South Africa

As many of you may know, there was a very troubling and problematic time in the Country of South Africa called the Apartheid. The time officially spanned from the late 1940s until 1994, during which the government supported and upheld sever racial segregation.

This series of photographs were taken by a man named Van Coller who grew up in South Africa during the Apartheid. The series of photos are about the role of black women who worked (and still do) for white families.

I recommend that you take some time to reflect on these images and read the article that accompanies them.

What do you think about the article and the photos? Do they do justice to his intent? Do they seem socially responsible? Irresponsible? Trivial? Powerful? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Link HERE