Come on out to Lotta Art, School 33 Art Center's annual fundraiser, where you can see one of my photographs and maybe even take it home!

From the School 33 website:

Lotta Art 2009
At Silo Point
1700 Beason Street
Saturday, April 25, 2009

Attend an evening of art, food and fun!  Meet and mingle with the contributing artists!  Lotta Art features juried art by more than 120 local artists who have generously donated their work to benefit School 33 Art Center. Each art ticket holder is guaranteed a work of art in this lottery-style drawing.  

Continuous Cocktail Buffet and Art Viewing begins at 6:00pm
Drawing begins promptly at 7:30pm.
Catering by The Pantry

Tickets
Art ticket - $175 each
Art ticket - $150 for members, participating artists, and tickets purchased through March 31, 2009
Guest ticket - $50, not eligible to select art work

Buy tickets online here.


Okay, okay -- can't shell out almost 200 bucks for a ticket?  You can preview the work online April 11-25 or in person at Silo Point April 18-24.

The 6th Annual Transmodern Festival
Four Days of Avant Performance, Installation,
Sound, Film, Mayhem, Ecstasy, and Radical Culture!

April 2, 2009 - April 5, 2009
H&H Building
405 W. Franklin Street
Baltimore, MD
http://www.transmodernfestival.org/2009/

Letters, Words, and Phrases
March 23, 2009 - April 26, 2009
     
The use of language was a major part of cubism, futurism, Dada, and other avant-garde art movements. It was also important in pop art, which frequently incorporated advertising text and logos, and conceptual art, in which language often became the artwork itself. Words and images began to function interchangeably, breaking down distinctions between the two and creating a sort of synthesis. Thus, language and image often oscillate in contemporary visual art, forcing the viewer to infer some basis for associating them. Letters, Words, and Phrases is an exhibition that explores visual art's ongoing engagement and entanglement with language, bringing together works by nine contemporary artists who use letters, words, and phrases as part of their work: sculptures by Ruth Bowler and R.L. Croft, photography by Susan Eder and Craig Dennis, mixed-media art by Cara Ober and Susan Brandt, prints by Rebecca Katz, and drawings by Julie Marie Geare and Molly Springfield.

Goucher College
Towson, MD
http://meyerhoff.goucher.edu/rosenberg/

Patterns of Obsession
March 20, 2009 - May 2, 2009

Gallery Imperato is pleased to announce Patterns of Obsession, a three-person show that brings into light the visual and behavioral patterns of each individual artist. On display will be Dana Reifler Amato's luminous, three-dimensional drawings, Chris Bathgate's precision made, metal sculptures, and Matthew Kern's mixed media Polaroid collages.

Gallery Hours: Saturdays 11-7 or by appointment
921 E. Fort Ave
Suite 120
Baltimore, MD
http://www.galleryimperato.com/home.cfm

Yesterday evening I walked home from work with a big smile on my face, feeling excited about recent goals. I suppose it all stems from a desire to be more outgoing – I'm naturally shy and reserved – but I've had a strong desire to reconnect with old friends, forge stronger relationships with new friends, and get myself and my art work out into the world.

In school, art professors stressed the importance of dismissing our shyness when interacting with the art world. One even told me having two drinks (no more, no less) at gallery openings was the key to effective networking. Laugh if you want to, but those of us who get seriously anxious about calling our friends on the weekend need to think outside the box at events that require us to project ourselves to total strangers.

While I haven't handed out business cards at too many openings lately, I have made a concerted effort to branch out in my everyday life. This week I did two things that bolstered my confidence and sense of excitement about my work. I submitted five photos to Lotta Art, an annual benefit show for Baltimore's School 33 Art Center. I feel really good about this regardless of the outcome,but if my images get chosen it will be a great opportunity for me to get out and get to know some more visual arts people around town.

Entering work into juried shows can be intimidating at first – until you realize there really is nothing to lose. If your images don't get chosen, so what? Obvious as it may sound, that concept took me a long time to internalize.

Second on my list, I just emailed a friend to talk about some brand new ideas I've had for my work. My new direction – should I choose to take it – will be much more personal than anything previous, so talking about it was just as difficult as having any other personal conversation (here we go with the shy thing again). However, once I clicked “send” I felt this great sense of excitement, as if my view of the world gained value with the act of sharing it.

Who knows, maybe it does. I've always been a somewhat private person, more comfortable discussing ideas and opinions that didn't reveal much about myself. My art has reflected the same: intellectually interesting with minimal personal risk. As I get older and work to establish myself personally and professionally in a new city, I suddenly feel a need to be more alive. I want to take risks, I want people to know more about me.

In general, I'd recommend everyone take a few more personal risks. What do any of us have to lose? On the other hand, there is so much to gain by getting yourself out there: new relationships, new opportunities, a wider network, more of your art hanging in shows.

On Sunday I finally got down to the Contemporary Museum to see the Dawoud Bey Class Pictures show. I'm a huge advocate of seeing art work in person, so when I heard about these large color portraits I knew I just could not miss them.

The thing is, I didn't find them as striking in the flesh as I expected. Of course the prints were big, glossy, and perfectly exposed, but somehow I just wasn't floored by the impact of seeing them on a wall vs. on my computer screen. However, the time I spent reading the narrative next to each portrait gave me ample time to think about the work and though I haven't had a chance to leaf through the book, I'm suspecting it may actually be the best way to experience these photos. Photography books provide the slow, quiet beauty and intimacy these pictures need. The gallery setting was a little bit too spacious for the images to have their full effect. If you've seen it, I'd love to know your reaction and if you agree with this assessment.

Even though the physical presence of the photos was not as impactful as I would have liked, the series itself is very impressive. For anyone not familiar, I recommend you check it out on Bey's website. These images of teens across the country reveal inner selves that contradict the visual stereotypes we have at first glance. Standing in the middle of the room, I could not have guessed who had a young child, who was brought up by lesbian parents, who wanted to be a writer or who had a parent struggling with addiction.

The accompanying texts written by Bey's subjects crack open the judgments and fears we harbor inside when we see young people on the street. I also remember my own youth, how I judged my peers, and now I wonder about the true stories behind their appearances and actions. Indeed, Bey's Class Pictures portray a population most often viewed as either threatening or insignificant. The scale and beauty of the work, along with the voices so clearly expressed in the texts, celebrates these individuals as the complex young adults they are.

If you're in Baltimore, you only have until February 21 to get to the Contemporary Museum and see these photos. After that, the book is available from the Aperture Foundation.

All images copyright Dawoud Bey via http://www.dawoudbey.net/.

As seen recently on the Internet:

• It seems like these amateur photographs of Barack Obama during his college years are getting a lot of attention.  The idea of a woman digging negatives out of her basement from a bygone college photo class is pretty cool, but I was disappointed by the images themselves.  Maybe this is missing the point, but I found the compositions uninspiring and the feel of the photos to be rather posed/acted.
• I haven't been seeing enough art lately, but I'm making a resolution to see the traveling exhibit of Dawoud Bey's "Class Pictures" at the Contemporary Museum.  The prints themselves are big (30 x 40 inch color prints) and I cannot wait to see them.  I'm also eager to read the one-page pieces the subjects wrote, which are displayed with the photos.

This Thursday's links include...

• Did you know the National Museum of Women in the Arts is free every first Sunday of the month?  That means I could even splurge on a $14 Amtrak ticket rather than driving.  There really is no excuse not to go.
• Speaking of DC, it's too bad we can't combine Free Community Day at the NMOWA with American University's Mid-Atlantic MFA Invitational.  Oh well.
• I recently stumbled upon photographer Elinor Carucci and her "Crisis" series.  These domestic images are very intimate, almost to the point of making me feel slightly uncomfortable and voyeuristic.  It's interesting to see images so different from my own, yet still unfolding domestic life in pictures.
• The Magenta Foundation has posted a call for entries in search of emerging photographers age 34 and under.  I'm a little iffy about the $50 application fee, but then again, maybe that narrows the pool of competition.  Who knows? 
  

Note: Now that wedding, honeymoon, and moving have all been successfully completed, Words + Images will once again be updated weekly.

Somehow, despite a heat wave and a house full of boxes waiting to be unpacked, I managed to get to the BMA on the last day of Looking Through the Lens, an exhibition of iconic photography from 1900-1960.

A few local bloggers have already reviewed the show, which spanned four large rooms and certainly showcased the breadth of the BMA's photography collection if not their curatorial distinction. However, on the day of my visit I didn't examine the overall energy of the show, nor did I take particular interest in how the pieces communicated with each other on the walls. Blessed with only a few hours to spend with the work, I devoured the work piece by piece, notebook in hand, taking in as many images as I could before the exhibition closed.

It had been about a year since my last opportunity to enjoy art alone in a gallery setting like this. When I haven't been looking at work that interests me on a regular basis, I forget so easily the wealth of ideas and inspiration it can bring.

I won't discuss all my notes at once, but I do want to talk briefly this evening about the artist's hand. Art observers will most commonly refer to “seeing the artist's hand” in a piece of art actually made by hand. A painting or a sculpture, for example, can retain brush strokes or chisel marks to remind the viewer of the hands that created it. When we look at photographs, we likely judge them based on more scientific properties: depth of field, tonal range, composition, subject, or content. In my own work, seeing the process, the evidence of the artist's hand in a photograph, often distracts from true enjoyment of the piece.

The Raoul Ubac montage in Looking Through the Lens fascinated me, perhaps for this reason. The untitled piece featured an interesting study of a woman's face and a glass bottle. Though it looked very clean from afar, that illusion faded when I approached it for further inspection. Along the edges of the photos I saw dents and uneven cuts where the x-acto knife had wandered slightly. I saw where the man had cut the photographs with a tool.

This sight brought to mind my own late nights in the darkroom as an undergrad, utility knife in hand, working at a table cross-hatched with decades of stray x-acto marks. Though I don't always display it in the final project, I can't deny the tactile nature of traditional photo processes. Looking at work that retained some of that hands-on experience placed me squarely in the studio with the photographer, and the surreal imagery brought to mind the fragmented, incomplete images of my own thoughts. I could write a paper on traditional vs. modern photo practices, but for now I will just say I am unsure whether I would have had such a well-rounded experience with the photos had the piece been done in Photoshop.

The photo book by Charles Norman Sladen really stole the show for me, though. I scribbled down notes and gleaned a lot of ideas from the all the big names at the show, but Sladen's book Great Chebeague Island, Maine really took my breath away.

Surprisingly, we know very little about Sladen, save for the fact that he chronicled his family's travels to Great Chebeague Island in these unique and very striking photo books. Sladen pasted five or so pictures, generously spaced, onto the page and extended/embellished them with extremely intricate and talented ink drawings. The photos become only the starting point for a larger scene and Sladen weaves them together like an elaborate dream, all five connected by ink on the page.

Sadly, I have been unable to find images of Sladen's work online, and most references I found were responding to the BMA show. I would love to find a reproduction of the book I saw, but doubt such a thing exists.

I'm sure Looking Through the Lens will come up again in Words + Images. The argument can certainly be made that it lacked cohesion and focus, but the broad sampling of styles, content, and ideas also provided fertile ground for the mind to wander.

Until next week...