Spring 2008 Computer & Visual Arts Class

The ORDOVER Gallery

The second museum that I attended was the Ordover gallery in the San Diego's Natural History Museum. I also absolutely loved this gallery of photographs. I loved the colors and the incredible capture of nature in every image.
The first image that I looked at was in the Gallery Beyond the Object: Two Artists-Two Pathways- A Shared Vision. The artist is Robert Walter and the photograph that caught my eye was "Shoreline" (A beach rock from Cambria, CA).
This photograph did not look like a photograph at all, it looked like it was a painting. The texture of this image popped out like one could really go over and feel a rough surface. The image looked like it had glitter shimmer sprinkled all over it, but it was really just the incredible reflection of the water. The colors were so bright yet did not take over and contrasted well with light greys of the rock. The dark black shadow crevices create lines that draw the viewers attention from one side of the image to the other, while still not over taking the fabulous colors. This artist had a few photograph similar to this one and I wouldn't mind having any of them hanging over my fire place :-)

The second exhibit I viewed I think was the National Geographic Nature exhibit. I love photographs of animals, so I absolutely loved this one. It was difficult to just choose two to write about.
The first one was one that many people in the class wrote about. When they were sharing what they thought about it, I was just like oh it's just another penguin photo. I've seen it a million times, but when I actually went to the gallery and saw it with my one eyes I loved it. It is the photograph by Ralph Lee Hopkins called "Penguin Parade." I'm not sure if it was just the freshness of the ice glowing back at you or the adorable little penguins marching in a row that captured my smile. I really felt like I could actually picture the coldness to the point where it actually gave me goosebumps!

MOPA

When I went to MOPA there were three different galleries. I had an interest in two of them and wrote a little bit on 3 different works of art.
The first exhibit I went into was the HUMANITAS- Images of India by Fredric Roberts. I loved this gallery! I really do have a fascination with images from India. Their culture is just so bright and mysterious it brings the colors out in the prints so vibrantly. Roberts states how is photographs, "tell a story of beauty and grace, work and family, spirtuality and devotion." Every image tells a spactacular story and I found two that really sparked my interest.
The first print is called,
"Dark Eyes"
The photograph was up close look into the eyes of an Indian woman. I loved how the image was blurry around the edges and a softly focused face in the middle. The expression on her face was amazing as she starred straight into the camera with a little smirk on her face. Her dark brown eyes and dark skin complement each other and compared to the bright color of the jewel on her forehead really make the contrasting colors come to life. To finish it off the cropping makes it really come together to make a fabulous photograph.

The second print is called,
"Woman in a Truck" 2003
This photograph really attracted me because of it's unusual point of view. It's not very often when you see a pretty woman through the side planks of an old truck. I love how you can see her vibrant eyes peaking through with the sharpness of this woman's nose ring. Also with the sharpness you see her age through every wrinkle on her face and hands. I love the cropping in this photograph as well. The horizontal lines of the truck complement the vertical line of her body. The hand in the very top right corner gives you an interesting feeling of holding on tight.

The next gallery that I enjoyed and thought was very different was the FLESH- Portraits by Gary Schneider. This gallery was very interesting because it wasn't just plain ol' photographs hung on a wall. The room was very dark and all the images had a dark background with a piece of the body in a monotone color. He had DNA samples, blood samples and x-rays all blown up at least by 5 times. The images that I choose to write on was the

"Genetic Self Portrait: Hands"
This was a gelatin silver print of a pair of hands enlarged at least by 5 times. This photograph was kind of hard to explain or even hard to tell what exactly it was at all. It's easy to see it's a hand, but its hard to see how it was done. It looks like he had is hand pressed up against a glass with some kind of liquid on it so that you could make out his individual prints. The actual prints are very sharp with the liquid around them being very blurry and out of focus. I love how the left and right hands are on separate canvases and how each hand is right in the middle of that canvas. I think I would actually hand these on my wall at my home or business.

Review: Guest Artist- Diane Willow

April 9th 2008

In class we had a guest artist come and talk to us about her different works. It was very nice to have an artist come to us instead of viewing a video and just letting them tell us what they think we would want to know. We got to ask her any question that we wanted so that nice and refreshing.
I really liked her art when she was working with science, it was very interesting to see how she made things move when people would enter her exhibits. I think it would be so neat to enter a room and have my presence make leaves on the ceiling move around. I liked her work over all.

TODAYS WORK

Today I worked on a family photograph from a photo shoot I did earlier this weekend. This family has two very young boys so getting them to look at the camera with a ton of other stuff going on is definitely a challenge. What I did here was take the photograph of the family sitting on another part of the beach and then copy them into a more appealing portion when in photoshop. I also was not as happy with the older boys face so I took a different photograph of his face and put it into the newly formed one. Wow! I think it was harder to describe what I just did,  then to actually do it. I then added a fun border with different brushes and textures. TAKE A LOOK!

PROJECT 2

My second accordion:

In this project I made a birthday card for my good friend and incorporated photographs that she had previously taken and ones that I had taken. It was a difficult one because I am not used to using other peoples photos as well as, learning to work with only a certain number and size. 

REVIEW: Richard Monrach

I really thought this artist was pretty cool. I loved the way he used light to create an entire image of one would see with the naked eye. He transformed images from a plan ol' picture to a powerful statement that was hard to keep your eyes off of.  I believe that he found a "niche" and went with it so that he could change the world views with one photograph at a time. Most people that have this niche I find to be boring  and simply "taking a snap shot" of the terrible things of this world, but Richard finds his way to bring the important scary thoughts to real life so that people can no longer just dream about them. 

REVIEW: Sally Mann

This isn't the first time I have seen this film on Sally Mann and this isn't the first time that I have fallen in love with her work. I love the images that she took while her kids were growing up. I think that she was able to catch this moment in time in which most mothers wish they could keep for forever, when their babies were still babies. She has a gift that she has given herself that not only lasts a life time, but a gift that is something that is so true and real, unlike what a posed portrait studio would give most. I think that she was just photographing her kids being kids and that anybody that would judge an artist's work of something so natural and beautiful is absolutely ridiculous! 

REVIEW: COLLIER SCHORR

I believe that this artist had many interesting points when she was speaking and showing off her work of the German boys. It was pretty cool how they would all be playing American army heros and they would just pose for her. I believe that that is every photographers dream, to have any person dress up in interesting clothes or outfits and sit there patiently for a photographer. I liked how she wasn't afraid to also have the boys be put into an awkward situation that would make for the photographs to turn out even more interesting than the ones before. Pretty good.

JAKE

Today's class project. I added his name for a little twist, but I'm still not sure if I'm a fan yet or not.

REvieW: Roni Horn

Hmm... what to say, what to say...  Roni Horn's art work I found to be very smooth and settling. All of the pieces that we saw in the video were very flowey peaceful. I liked her different ideas such as the water in the building photographs that were put into the halls of the building to create a river. She used the natural aspects to create an illusion that would take one out of a hall way and into a zen. She does this by putting the calm water photos against the students gilding quickly along to create a rushing flow... amazing! Then in most of her works I enjoyed viewing her sense of repetition to create rhythm as well as the slight variety aspect to spice things up a bit. 

Updated

I took the image that I worked on 2 weeks ago and applied all the stuff that I learned today to make the image achieve an even more sensational appeal when looked at. Especially because I took all the photographs that I combined together so that the overall piece has a special meaning to me. What do you think???

I really liked this artist! Finally, somebody I can relate to in this course. I really enjoyed his theories of being able to create art and not have to fallow the "rules" that many have set before. His art work was very enjoyable and pleasant to view and thus, he has had zero "professional" training. He just goes with the flow!

Part 2:

The way that David Carson thinks is something that I could heavily relate to. I love how he comes up with these ideas and just runs with them. Whether it be trying to build up an avalanche of words to make an article seem to be intense or to start with trying to mask off a piece of an image to crop it and end up throwing some bright yellow cellophane paper on it and presto, he has a whole new crazy image... I love the freedom he has when he is designing his layouts, I think it allows him to hit and miss to create master pieces that only one can dream of...

Part 3

Steven  Sagmeister

Wow, I believe this artist gets a lot of credit in my book. Artists that were able to do all of the incredible typology that is done now my computers in actual real life form are amazing. I think it is crazy how one can step out of a computer and come up with ideas to display text in real every day items. I also liked his comments about how his art work is not done for all fun and games, but to put an important message across. I hope someday to be able to come out of my shell so that I may do the same. 

My First Accordion Card

Yay! This is my first project completed for the class!!! What do you think?

I photographed a wedding a couple of weeks ago and as a thank you I decided to make the couple this little card.

Look Closely

This is what I worked on today in class.... Look closely, there are 10 different images combined to make this one. 

Just a Few...

This is one of my favorite photos that I have composed which I did by blending two different images together. There is just something so simple about the human face and the flower, something so delicate. So I took a self portrait and then a picture of a beautiful flower and presto! 

This photograph was taken less than a week after the October fires. When a city has gone through such a terrible ordeal, it brings out the patriotism of people. One afternoon while I was walking to work I turned around and saw this beautiful sunset along with this beautiful flag blowing in the breeze. I just couldn't resist the urge to break out my camera. 

The Ridgecrest sky.  I really didn't even have to edit much of this at all. The colors are all natural and I merely snapped this photo while poking my head out of the window while my boyfriend was speeding down the highway. 

Review of Edward Burtynsky

I found this photographer to be rather boring.... well some of it anyway. I think he had a great cause for taking his images, but them themselves were rather bland and boring. Again, this was just most of them. There were some good ones for example the portrait of the woman standing out in-front of her house with all the recyclable goods. That photograph showed the extreme desperate emotion which really interested me. And again, it's not that his photographs were not "good," they just did not appeal to my way of photography. I do however appreciate his work because he is trying to get a point across to those of us who do not understand what terrible things are going on in this world. 

Review of James Nachtwey

I found this war photographer to be very interesting. The first reason is that his photographs were really not all that technically amazing as far as looking at a subject in a different perspective, but it was his ablitltiy to get the chance to photograph the things and the  people that he did. Most people, especially in a state of all time personal low, would not just let some random guy come up and photograph them. This photographer must have had some kind of special connection or look to himself to make other people, sometime the enemy, feel comfortable facing into the lens of his camera. Because of this gift he has with the human race as a whole he is able to let his viewers come into the picture and see something critically amazing that they have never imagined.