Artist Statement...sort of

I have never ever thought of myself as an artist, so this is more of a finding myself as an artist statement, than an actual artist statement. Here goes:

It started with a shirt. The message was easy enough, “party til you puke.” I intended to do just that, wearing that very shirt I had created with spray paint and a handmade stencil. It was the first time I had made something that conveyed a message to the world. I was instantly hooked. I longed for more but had never thought of myself as an artist. I have always been creative, but I could never draw, let alone paint pictures. In school that meant you couldn’t be an artist, so I always wished I had the natural talent and chalked it up to bad genes. Recently I enrolled in the Digital Media Master’s program at Northeastern, and before I knew it, I was headed down a path I had only dreamed of taking. This path is one that has brought me here today although I did not know that was where I was headed. My first project in this class, “Choke Hold” showed me that I COULD be an artist. The picture was gritty and visceral but again I was able to tell the world what I wanted, this time a little more subtly. The picture portrays the message of a struggle and the will to never give up. It shows that you can resist something for so long that it actually becomes a part of you, but also, to never let go of a hope that there is something more out there.

Going to the “Book as Art” exhibit opened my eyes farther. This showed me that almost anything can be art. Art never has to fit a mold, nor does it have to break one. Art is exactly what you intend it to be. My journey brought me to the ICA; where I stumbled upon my most inspiring find yet, an artist by the name of Shepard Fairey. I knew of him prior to this find, but I did not think of him as much of and artist. To me, he was like myself, making his own stencils and spray painting silly pictures and phrases (where I started with a drinking shirt, he started with a picture of Andre the Giant and the phrase, “Andre the Giant has a posse”). After I saw Shepard Fairey’s exhibit I knew I had a place in the art world too. His works, such as “Duality of Humanity 3” and “War By Numbers” convey very intense messages to his viewers, and it was all done through spray-paint and handmade stencils. His work is beautiful and meaningful and touched me in more ways than one. He has shown me that I can tell a story, tell MY story, through any means of media. I feel like it was fate that brought me to the ICA that day. I now have to confidence to create and call my self an artist. Now all I have to do is find my voice and become strong enough to make the world listen. Writer Anaïs Nin wrote, “And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." This is where I find myself now, trying to unfurl each petal to get to the center of myself as an artist.

My artist statement

I am an observer. I have been my entire life.

I was born into a huge family with loads of sorrow and not much else. From an early age I learned to watch - quietly - from the corner. As I grew older and developed the skills to articulate what it was I saw, I turned my vision towards writing, pursuing a degree in Creative Writing and Linguistics. I furthered my training by also studying design and typography at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. My eye for observation has carried over to my professional life as well. Be it parsing conversations with drug addicts for the truth lurking behind what they were telling me to monitoring client accounts for spending anomolies, I have always been on the lookout for the less obvious.

My creative vision tends towards the Macro. I thoroughly enjoy examining things at the most extreme level. many of my favorite photographs are those where the true subject of the image is not what it would seem to be: A picture of a bottle cap looks like so much more to me... A close up of an orange looks a bit like a neural-net. The quick snap of a friend looks at first like a portrait but to me is a fantastic picture of flowers. Sometimes I will snap a picture just for the mere interesting nature of the texture.






I found the exhibit of books at BC to be compelling. The way that a familiar object that often times is instantly readable [pun acknowledged but not intended] as a book but at the same time utterly and completely something else really resonated with me. I like the Trompe l'oeil aspect of the artists books the best. Was it a head cabbage? That's not a book, it's a bunch of teabags... Fascinating. It is that fooling of the eye, the guiding of ones gaze is what I find most interesting. I think I succeeded just a little with my picture of the ice:


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Recently, I have developed a keen interest in Tilt Shift and Miniature faking photography. Here is an photographic example:



And here is a video example:

Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

I enjoy the way these images engage the mind and make it work in ways beyond what we are programed to see. I really like how - through manipulation of color saturation, focus, and depth of field - what would be an ordinary snapshot becomes something compelling (and at some level challenging). It is a technique I had hoped to employ more successfully with my ice transformation images, and I hope to explore more and more of this technique going forward. I could imagine really fantastic results when utilized in the creation of an artist's book.

My video.

Here it is.

I had to abandon my plans to film popcorn as the camera fell into the sizzling hot oil and became less than a camera. Instead, I recreated the process I underwent for the first assignment, the one where we had to depict transformation.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v351/PsiYamaneko/school/?action=view&current=Projectcomplete_0001.flv

Here's my project, very humble. Sorry about the delay.

It is the story of downloading and installing Flash over a slow internet connection.

I am going to create a little story about corn. More precisely, popcorn.

I am planing to incorporate extreme close ups, wide shots, weather shots, cutaways and cut-ins. I intend to combine live action and still photography.

Simple Task Treatment - Ke

My simple task is preparing for the gym.

start at a view of a man's back, he is in a kitchen, arranging some bottles. A shot for window will let the viewer know the time is early morning. cut to those bottles, they are container of different kind of supplements. The man carefully pours some pills from each bottle, and eat them. then he grab a shaker bottle, put some powder in it, shake and drink. He grabs a banana, eats it. He put his ipod armband on, headphone on, and change his watch to a sports watch. he walks to the door, change his shoe to sports shoe, and walks out. Many CU will be used for a very close view of each object, such as supplements bottles, watch, banana. and many CU will give to the man's mouth, throat (when he eat and drink), arm and feet.

Story Treatment - Jerry

This simple movie will document the process of how to record an electric guitar in Stereo with a computer. This will be an informational video that shows the user how to connect two microphones to a computer, position the microphones in relation to the amplifier (and each other), and record to hard disc using Apple’s Garageband application. I will look at the three main components necessary to record to a computer: Microphones, Audio Interface, and a Recording Application (in this case Garageband).

I will speak briefly about recording using multiple tracks and using the stereo space to ‘place’ your instrument using these multiple tracks. I will also speak briefly about how best to get a clean, loud, and noise-free recording using the audio interface and careful microphone placement.

Most of this video will be shot ‘talking-head’ style with several cut-aways to show details of the individual components. In addition there will be some voice-over audio for the cut-away images and there will be intro and exit music overdubs from the recorded guitar. This video will be shot in one interior location.

Treatment: The Epic Saga of the Downloading and Installing of Adobe Flash CS4 and the Woman Who Attempted to Do It.

The idea I have for a film is a woman trying to install Flash CS4. She will find it can't install on one computer that lacks the juice to run it, she will try another computer where the download can't start and on the third it finally works. Thing is, downloading and installing Flash on a shaky connection can take hours. The story will be told through POV shots and cut away shots indicating the passage of time and showing how she is attempting to spend it. (For example: time passes and she's playing a DS, time passes and she's watching TV, time passes and she's sleeping at the desk.) While working on the second computer she gets fed up and walks out the door, down the street, buys a coffee, and comes back. This story is based on actual events.

Story Treatment

Alright, changed my mind. For my movie I will be documenting a hike in New Hampshire. I will show us driving in the car and hiking up the mountain. I plan on keeping the camera on my back back while I hike to give it a realistic look. I want it to be shot from my perspective. Then, I will pan back and forth when we get to the top to show the view. After hiking I will show is hanging out and eating/drinking. It will really be a document of the whole weekend, but the main focus will be the hike.

Hi All,
I enjoyed our class very much. it's somuch fun to see all the different interpetations of an assignment.
Here's the info I promised to post. The web site that gives lots of photo tips is www.johnpaulcaponigro.com.
The adhesive I used for my book is called naripaste,which is a Japanese rice paste. I get it rom Daniel Smith art supplies.
Ruth

Ke Collage

Artist Books

By far I think the most successful and amusing was Allison Cooke Brown's TeaTimes. All the familiar bits of a book are all there - text/editorial content, paper, imagery, a protective outer layer - yet in an assemblage entirely not typical of a book. One is compelled to wonder just what it is that she has written on each and every tea bag in the box. And since witty statements, fortunes, and Bon Mots are printed on every tag attached to every bag of Salada Tea, there is the added intrigue of wanting to know what each label says, and how it related to what the artist wrote on the bag.

My initial reaction as I approached Julie Chen's Bon Bon Lots was that it looked fat too commercial.... perhaps something you could purchase at Paper Source or some such place. After reading the provenance label on the wall, my instincts were proven right: the piece was published by Flying Fish Press (albeit in a limited run). It felt out of place to me.

My reaction to Lara Walker's Freedom: A Fable; a Curious Interpretation of the Wit of A Negress in Troubled Times, With Illustrations was certainly heightened by the description of the work and the artists work as a whole. As it stood on it's own, I thought it was a beautifully executed piece. Her cut work is exquisite.

Less successful books in the exhibit in my opionion where Nancy Leavitt's piece (it looked too much like a over sized brochure), The Green Salad piece (too sculptural), and Lois Morrison's After Water Aerobics. The last could hardly be called a book: in fact, I would be more comfortable calling it a mixed-media sculpture.

collage

Museum

I managed to get back into the city on Saturday thanks to what can only be called serendipity. I was pretty sure I was not going to make it. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the exhibit though, like the others who have posted their reactions, I came away a bit unsure of what exactly constitutes an artist's book. The books there ranged from books, to fold-outs, to paper sculptures, to things that were most definitely not books by any traditional definition of the term. There is, however, a less-used definition of the word that means "anything that serves for the recording of facts or events" which I guess applies here.

I have never been so frustrated by "do not touch" signs in my life. Some of the books I desperately wanted to open or interact with, like the shadow puppets. My favorite was "Dinner with Dewey" in the downstairs gallery which made me smile. The logic of the Dewey Decimal system as applied to things outside book cataloguing, very clever.

Museum

So I went to see the exhibit of artist's books at the museum and was pretty impressed. I must say though, that I am still some what fuzzy on what actually constitutes a "book" since some of them did not seem like books at all. It seems like you can pretty much call anything an artist book. Some of my favorites included "The Legacy of Scherazade" by Donatella Franchi. I really liked the story behind this one and she had made shoes out of paper and wrote on them. "After Water Aerobics" by Lois Morrison was one of my favorites. It was in a case but it looked like you could turn a nob and have the people and words rotate around. I thought it was cute. "Green Salad" by Katherine Glover made me laugh because it really did look like green salad. The one I was very impressed with was "Unfinished Symphony" by Elena Presser. The detail in the piece was amazing and I stared at it for a long time. I really liked how in the middle you could see through it to another layer behind it. It was very cool. Alright, that's it! All in all I liked the exhibit. I also liked that the man at the front said I could leave my iced tea with him instead of having to throw it out since I had just gotten it. :)

Took four of my pictures of the graveyard in different lights and arranged them into "one" image. Mostly experimental, but I liked the result.

04/14 Wanting "BBQ"coke

Fireball

The end of the day is always beautiful 8pm

Test post for 05:30 class

This post is being authored and tagged for the 05:30 class of Time-Based Media.