Documentum - Issue #2 Pictures and Words

Last year, a publication called Documentum was born. The first issue featured artists "who are engaging with Instagram in a committed way" and it was reviewed in The New York Times. This spring, guest curator, Kate Palmer Albers asked me to participate in Issue 2: Pictures and Words and I am thrilled to have my humble typed-written imagery alongside artists and writers whom I have respected for years. The cover of the latest issue displays every single photograph printed on the 60+ pages inside.

Last week a review in Dutch was published here [Image via Photo Q Bookshop]. If only my ancestors were around to help me translate it.

It is available for purchase here. It's a wonderful periodical dedicated to archiving digital imagery in print. I can't wait to see what enfolds in future issues.

Food and Self-Portraits

Scott and Kim Anderson's Backyard, Hartford City, Indiana appeared in the Joyce Elaine Grant 2016 Exhibition in January. The theme? Food. The photograph? Cake. I was happy to share an award with Amelia Morris whose canned goods in the image above are making me hungry.

One of the self-portraits in this juried exhibition will be traveling to LightBox Photographic Gallery in Astoria, Oregon and the Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts. Here is the text that accompanies the photograph:

I spent three weeks in the Fall of 2013 printing one page of all the fonts that featured a pound sign in Microsoft Word. During lab days when my students were working on their projects, I painstakingly cut each one apart, ending with an estimated 30,804 (my cat may have eaten a few). The goal was to draw attention to the overuse of the hashtag in social media by creating a photograph where they dominated, yet ultimately revealed nothing more than an element of disguise.

"Sketch: The Art of Study"

Currently on view at Gordy's Fine Art and Framing Company through 2 May 2015, Sketch: The Art of Study (curated and contents organized by Braydee Euliss).

My friend and fellow artist, James Luckett, pressured me into rejoining Instagram in November 2013 after a year’s self-imposed hiatus. This folder contains the successes and failures and sources of inspiration for 3/4 of the photographs found @jacindarussellart. My process is often the antithesis of “instant” where I preplan and collect images for days, weeks or months. The contents seen here show the preliminary steps of the images found on Instagram and those, in turn, are a “sketch” for my greater conceptual practice.

Jacinda Russell 2015

Toilet Paper Magazine

Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari for The New York Times Magazine, 22 February 2015

About eight months ago, I became infatuated by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari's Toilet Paper Magazine. I may even have purchased a couple Christmas presents that featured this image...

... and a 2015 calendar...

 ... in which I am currently responding to each month on Instagram...

(with taxidermy coyote eyes)

(and a package of organic rainbow carrots).


From the New Yorker:

In Toilet Paper, the images might appear to have been appropriated from world’s most surreal stock-photograph service, but they’re all made from scratch. “Every issue starts with a theme, always something basic and general, like love or greed,” Cattelan explained. “Then, as we start, we move like a painter on a canvas, layering and building up the issue. We always find ourselves in a place we didn’t expect to be. The best images are the result of improvisation.” Many images are rejected, he said, because they’re “not Toilet Paper enough.” What makes a Toilet Paper photo? “We keep homing in on what a Toilet Paper image is. Like distilling a perfume. It’s not about one particular style or time frame; what makes them Toilet Paper is a special twist. An uncanny ambiguity.”

I wish I had seen Cattelan and Ferrari's mural on the High Line billboard in June 2012:

I am fascinated with any artist/trickster whose work that I have respected who announced his retirement from the art world yet continues to produce provocative imagery (and who may not have truly retired - hello Marcel Duchamp).

Art About Instagram: From Surel's Place

The last post about Surel's Place before the next leg of the journey begins. Check out all the new pieces on Instagram as nearly two dozen were created on this residency.

"Daylight" by James Luckett

James Luckett recently created a series of photographs on his iPad that I have not stopped thinking about since I saw them on Instagram. He documents one winter day in Yellow Springs, Ohio from a window in a shotgun house. He is no stranger to using this "low tech" camera to create artistic photographs. See the rest here.

My (nonexistent) Spare Time...

... is devoted to this:

Reading Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950

Listening to Carrie Mae Weems discuss From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried on the Modern Art Notes podcast.

Jacinda Russell, Instagram Loading in Sierra or Tom Friedman's Untitled (a ring of plastic drinking cups), Aerial View, 1993

Critiquing two months of 27 photographs on Instagram.

Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs, Book Cam (Aperture Edition) 210mm, 2012

Preparing a talk on the Aperture Remix exhibition currently on display at the Ball State Art Museum (= best show since I've lived here). More soon.

Marcel Duchamp, In Advance of the Broken Arm, 1963

Shoveling more snow (and drifts) from the driveway than I ever have in my life (inventing new swear words and complaining profusely on how much I despise winter).

Beth Hoeckel

Dreaming hourly of how I can live in a warm climate 365 days of the year. Hoeckel's photographs evoke a sense of longing for warm weather, blue skies, clear water, and swimming outdoors. I can dream....

Found: Wedding Ring

Responsibility = check (two weeks on Craigslist with only one response identifying it to have diamonds = wrong).

Emotional baggage = check (see above photograph).

Solicited advice from anyone who would listen = check.

Best advice received from Pat (below):

a few things to dwell upon....

this sounds like a premise for a body of work on your part, as gold comes with its own baggage, aside from your personal baggage.for one thing, any gold you have in your possession must, by the laws of probability and of history, have molecules of gold melted down from the whole world's treasures and possessions, ancient and modern.  therefore, a gold ring contains bits from the various pharoah's melted treasures, plus  the many artifacts of the ancient, medieval and modern world that were melted down time and time again. Gold is the one material that seems to be infinitely recyclable.  You are getting your gold back, the same mix of gold your wedding ring was made from.   

so whatever emotional baggage the found ring seems to possess, that very gold - cold, incorruptible, neutral - has had a billion tears of gratitude and sorrow shed over it by countless human beings.  The tragedy / loss of the particular ring now in your possession, whether it was an unfortunate accident or a deliberate act of ridding oneself of an intolerable burden, was one of many lost and found moments for the gold.  It is now yours. 

Pawned = check.
In the name of Art = fast forward to 2015 when I spend the $45 en route to the Gold Coast.

Trying to Survive

Surprised the phone didn't freeze while taking this photograph in -14º.

Skyriter Eraser

A surprise arrived in my post office box yesterday - an old school eraser to accompany the Skyriter. I am banging out typewritten text for my new "Art about Instagram" side project. It is a slow process as each image is not instantaneous, rather an overly planned fabrication. For the first time in my life, I am participating in a form of social media that is public (yes, a photograph was made to express my horror of that action).

I am now embracing that I have six side projects occurring simultaneously rather than one large one. Accepting this was difficult to do. I am looking forward to the holidays AKA more studio time.

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)

Instagram Vacation: Oregon

JKR Workspace 1

JKR Workspace 2

JKR setting up the photo shoot

The Ghost House Revealed, Astoria

Astoria

Graduation & birthday cupcakes travel disaster, Neskowin

View from the rental house, Neskowin

The Rock, Neskowin

Trees at low tide, Neskowin

Last July I spent three days watching this rock in Italy...

... this July I spent three days watching this rock in Oregon.

One of those Gerhard Richter clouds.

Outdated information, Astoria Column

Last walk along the Columbia River, Astoria

Adios, Oregon (my mini travel photography brochure)