Portrait in December

James took this portrait of me earlier this month. I look like I belong in a sideshow but love it anyway. Hipstamatic Tintype on his iPad (with two multiple exposures).

"Gray Stone" by Richard Hugo

A gray stone does not change color wet
or dry. Baked on a scorched road or shaded
by cedars, underground or tossed
into a bright green sky, it's always gray.
It is the stone of earth, of the down-to-earth
no nonsense way of knowing life
does not often of its own volition provide.
A gray stone will not
change your luck or shorten the mortgage
or make you young again. It doesn't say
"now" to investments - money or love.
It doesn't say "no" when you plot wrong things
you are sure you must do with your life
or die from the drone. Keep one gray stone
in a secret place, and when those you love
are broken or gone, listen
with a sustained, with a horrible attention
to the nothing it has always had to say.

Richard Hugo

Snow Encore

 Paula McCartney's A Field Guide to Snow and Ice

 Lisa M. Robinson's Snowbound

Sonja Braas, Forces

Michael Itkoff, Ice Crack, Lake Wallenpaupak, Pennsylvania

Laura McPhee, Igloo Built Following Plans Downloaded from the Internet, 2005

Anne Massoni, Hanna to Snow XXIV, 2009

Cats + Chessie + Family

Sorting through many old family letters this winter break. It is a good reprieve from framing and presentation. I found this in my grandmother's keepsakes. Little did I know the Goedharts had a link to Arline Conradt's cat scrapbook. Chessie was very popular in the 1940s so it makes sense (startling nonetheless to see something here that is also on The Tale of Two Obsessions "wallpaper").

Death of Instagram

This week I will be closing my Instagram account for several reasons. First and foremost, I hate all things Facebook and know that this app will change radically next month (ads, privacy issues, selling of photographs, etc.) and I don't want to be a part of it. Secondly, I was spending too much time on it and neglecting this forum. One of the reasons why I liked Instagram is that for once in my life, it was acceptable to take casual nonart photographs. I am not a documentary photographer and I used Instagram as a way to discover what I could be photographing in that manner if I chose it (granted my life could be summed up as cats, food, art and the road trip).

Here are some of my favorite images from the year and one week I incessantly checked and downloaded images with that app. They aren't extraordinary, merely simple documentations of the last year. I will miss Instagram but it's time to move on to other things (like Emoji art... ahem... coming soon).

First photograph posted of Button in the studio (December 2011)

 First day of class - reflection in James Luckett's photograph (January 2012)

Columbus, Ohio on a bitterly cold day (January 2012)

 Globes in my office (February 2012)

Human loitering shield, Los Angeles (February 2012)

The Strand Bookstore (March 2012)

Self-portrait at the copystand (April 2012)

Nicole Pancini's BFA Thesis show (May 2012)

Oatmeal surprising me while in the kitchen (June 2012)

My favorite character in Twin Peaks was always the Log Lady, Portland, Maine (August 2012)

Maura Jasper's weather book that I used to own as a kid (October 2012)

James Luckett at the Cincinnati Museum of Art (October 2012)

Paintbrush in Jennifer Halvorson's Office (October 2012)

Mark Perretta setting the dance floor on fire (Thanksgiving 2012)

Partial $1 bill I stuck to my car to photograph, Indianapolis (December 2012)

Oatmeal under the lamp (December 2012)

Framing Part 2

As this task has been all consuming, here are a couple images to illustrate this point. I feel as if I have framed this many images this week.

 
David Politzer, Photographs, Lawrence County, 2009

Simone Rosenbauer, #009 Land of the Beardies History House, Small Museums in Australia, 2009

Framing for the IAC Grant

I won a grant to frame all the photographs in A Tale of Obsession: David C. Nolan & Marilyn Monroe and the time had come to get busy on this task. I spent 28 hours over the last three days working on this. After many obstacles, they are done and they look decent! Next stop, finding an exhibition....

Trimming prints.

Signed prints.

Covering every conceivable flat space in the school's finishing room. Who knew a dry mount press would work?

First time I've used black wooden frames in awhile.

Twenty-four on the classroom tables and five more off to the side (not visible).

The very last one!

Now to figure out where to store them.

Year End Lists

2012 ended 30 November when it comes to Year End Lists. I haven't participated in a public one since That is So Last Year in 2003 (a 50+ page zine that had all the potential to continue in 2004 but sadly, did not). This year Drew DeBoy who is blogging up a frenzy (making me feel guilty) asked me to participate. Thanks for the opportunity Drew!

Frames!

I am so grateful for having shared a studio assistant with Hannah this semester. Guess what Autumn made for me this past month? Twenty-nine frames for David C. Nolan & Marilyn Monroe prints. This will be my first task as soon as school ends this week!

Gearing up for the cat scrapbook

Winter Break is just around the corner. This means my life will be full of framing Marilyn Monroe photographs and starting/finishing my own version of Arline Conradt's cat scrapbook. I have a lecture at Herron School of Art and Design in February on this subject so it's time to wrap it up! In the meantime, here is another post on artists who feature cats in their work.

Ed Panar, From Animals that Saw Me (one of the funniest books I've purchased in ages), 1993-2010

Emily Shur, Cats by the Pool, Los Angeles, CA, 2012 (see the video below on how this image was photographed)

Maggie Taylor, Distracted Cats, 2003

Masaki Miyazawa, Once Upon a White Night, 1981 via Fans in a Flashbulb

 Sarah Wilmer, Flyers and Fox, 2008

Tony Mendoza, The Ernie Series

Stephen Eichhorn, Plants and Animals

Robert Adams on Autobiography

Robert Adams, Umatillo County, Oregon

Tonight I read and scanned images from
this
this
and
this.

The above images are from the retrospective catalog and struck me as another way of looking at the Autobiography series. Alas, the three volume tome is out of my price range but the exhibition will be forever burned in my memory.

Honoring the Fine Arts - 48 Years Later