"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

2014 National Society for Photographic Education Conference

The illustrated version (someday when there is more time, these posts will feature elaborate descriptions):

Frantically printing an 8.5" x 11" portfolio the night before the conference.

Frenzied assembly of panel discussion powerpoint at every available moment (ATL airport).

Nerve racking minutes before the panel discussion began.

James writing my introduction while Camden looks on (five minutes before).

James's introduction that I snagged afterwards and photographed in the hotel room.

Taking a photograph of James and me while Camden introduces the Postcard Collective.

Sadly, my SPE partner in crime, Amelia Morris, was missing this year but was represented in the panel and on the above postcard.

[Pause...] No photographs represent the following:

• student portfolio reviews in which I was out of the room by 8:15 AM, speaking somewhat coherently at 9 in the morning (!!!)

• three professional portfolio reviews where I put those 8.5" x 11" prints to use (also out of the room before 9 AM speaking less lucidly than the previous morning)

• Joan Fontcuberta's guest lecture on truthfulness and photography

• winning a raffle print after promising if my name is called, I would give the print to James (he now owns a photograph by Donna Ferrato)

• my horror after seeing a sign for hotdogs topped with mac and cheese and lump crab cake as a menu item

Student work from the photography department at MICA .

Paulina, James, and I photographing the candles that we systematically swiped in the name of Conceptual Art (and performance) from nearly every table at the dance party (photograph by Camden Hardy).

Sixteen candles before party goers came to our corner of the cavernous room and removed them to return to their own very dark tables.

SPE: where very little sleep is had by all (as usual falling on the weekend when we lose an hour because of Daylight Savings).

Destination: Baltimore

Purpose: Society for Photographic Education Panel Discussion

Photo courtesy of Camden Hardy.

If you are in town for the conference, come see James Luckett, Camden Hardy and me dissect the Postcard Collective including these two images from Kristin Reeves and Maria Daniela Quirós.

"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.

What visiting artist's powerpoint wouldn't start off with this?

Lionel Rombach Gallery, University of Arizona, April 1998

Thanks for inviting me to the Art Academy of Cincinnati, James!
More soon.

Response to "There are Precedents"

Sixteen months ago, I received this in the mail from James Luckett. I pinned it to the studio wall, vowing to answer it, knowing full well I could never do it with as much justice as the original.

Front of There are Precedents by James Luckett

Back of There are Precedents by James Luckett

My response is nowhere near as compelling as James's but it is done. I wrote the text at Ucross and printed it this week. I am looking forward to seeing what Jennifer Hall does with it next.

In the meantime, I have since received the artwork, postcards, book, and typewriter ribbon above from James. Too many things to like. Too many things to do.

On another note, we are participating in a panel discussion at the next Society for Photographic Education conference in Baltimore in March on the Postcard Collective. We will be spreading the love of Mail Art. Hope to see you there.

"Back and Forth: The Art of the Postcard Exchange"

I was fortunate that two friends visited Back and Forth: The Art of Postcard Exchange at the Florence Quarter Gallery at the Southwest University of Visual Art in Tucson, Arizona yesterday. Here are some installation photographs by Cass Fey.

The exhibition is curated by Camden Hardy with works by James Luckett, Cat Lynch, Amelia Morris, Anh-Thuy Nguyen, Jacinda Russell and Kathleen Ryan.

 Anh-Thuy in front of my giant photograph of the Thunderbird Hotel swimming pool in Marfa, Texas.

Detail with water sample.

Anh-Thuy and Cass with the water sample.

Camden's entire Postcard Collective collection spanning four years.

Detail of the collection.




Thank you, Cass, for sending this video and thank you, Nielson (a student at SUVA) for the poetic interpretation.

Recent Acquisitions

I love trading artwork despite the fact that I am running out of wall space. Add framing to the list of things I must accomplish by winter (for my own sanity not for a deadline). Here are two recent works by Adam Neese & James Luckett photographed in a manner to remind me that this task is in my immediate future.

Adam Neese's image from The Known World

From Adam's website: "To the observant wandering child, the landscape is a place of fantasy and fame. With this naive view, the scale of the world is skewed down; a field, a stand of trees, or an old road can hold the magic and possibility of the American west in 19th century frontier days. As I grew up and moved away, my childhood home remained in the same place. In the transition from adolescent to adult, my views of landscape have changed; but the woods near my parents' house still hold the same mystique and wonder that I remember from my youth."
 

James Luckett (the following text - which I love as much as the photograph - accompanies the image above and can be found on James' website).

The map is not the territory.- Alfred Korzybski

"I grew up with this picture above the television. It’s safe to say I’ve looked at this painting more than any other image. My mother bought it in Stuttgart the year I was born in the city I was born. Whenever I’ve asked her what she sees in it she’d square her eyes, furrow her brow and shake her head. I don’t know is what she says.

This past year helping her sort the house I was surprised when she no longer wanted it. I don’t know why was all she’d say. I hate to let it go, but I have to, I can’t do it any longer. Lips pursed, she said I just can’t. Head shaking she said I won’t.

Forty-one years and it felt fine to pull it free from the frame, it felt good to crumple it into my carry-on. It’s uncanny how quickly things can change. It’s mine now and I can do with it what I like. I can make this beautiful print for example. And then I can give it to you. And then I can just give that to you."

Society for Photographic Education National Conference: Chicago

 Valuable information learned at this year's conference:

1) The Photobook: A History Volume 3 will be published next year! I am a big fan of volumes 1-2 as envious as they make me of Martin Parr's book collection. Who wouldn't love a publication that prints photographs of opened books like this:

Daido Moriyama, Bye Bye Photography, 1972

2) Speaking of Mr. Parr, he is an endearing lecturer (by far my favorite talk of the conference). He showed his undergraduate school installation of photographs displayed in a living room, discussed Bad Weather at length, and his infatuation with collecting political ephemera, Saddam Hussein watches (he owns 85) and Osama bin Laden paraphernalia. So Long Osama Blood Orange Soda was the biggest oddity. Throughout most of the lecture, I dreamed of where Martin Parr stores all his objects (what does his house look like? how does he organize them? does he have room for more?).

 Martin Parr from Parrworld: Objects and Postcards

He also stressed that he is photographing fictions not realities as he intentionally captured litter at its worst in the image below.

Martin Parr from The Last Resort, 1983-85

I immediately placed Autoportrait on my interlibrary loan list when returning. Ending his lecture standing under a photograph of his head superimposed on a muscle man's body was the perfect conclusion coming from a soft spoken Englishman who excused himself for "having a frog" in the middle of his lecture.

 

Martin Parr from Autoportrait

3) Garry Winogrand is on everyone's mind since his first retrospective in 25 years opened at SFMOMA. I tend to love the photographers who make/made work vastly different from mine and he is no exception. Cass Fey and Leslie Calmes delivered an informative lecture on his archive at the Center for Creative Photography. His contact sheets are labeled PD if they are posthumously developed. If a print is made from one of those thousands of undeveloped rolls of film he left after he died, it can never be sold or de-accessioned. It exists only in the CCP archives. Small facts about printing work posthumously that I had always wondered about.

Garry Winogrand's Women are Beautiful on view at the Art Institute

4) Why or why wasn't Kate Palmer Albers teaching the history of photography at University of Arizona when I was in graduate school? Her lecture Abundant Images and the Collective Sublime resonated with me on so many levels. She discussed one of my favorite contemporary photography installations:

Erik Kessels, printing every photograph uploaded onto Flickr in a 24 hour period (image via)

Kessels piece, Penelope Umbrico's millions of sunsets, Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe's 100 Setting Suns at the Grand Canyon, and Gerhard Richter's Atlas were her primary examples of artists establishing mass.

Penelope Umbrico, Suns from Sunsets from Flickr, 2006-ongoing

These artists obsessively mark time with photography. She also stressed that the "self-archive is rapidly gaining headway" as a viable form of art. Albers' talk validated my current interests in masses of objects and introduced me to new artists like Hasan Elahi who explore surveillance and tracking in a contemporary way.

5) Richard Misrach's keynote lecture reminded me that I have to watch Spike Lee's follow-up to When the Levees Broke - If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise. I've refrained for a few years but after hearing Misrach discuss his latest photographic series, Petrochemical America, the time has come.

Richard Misrach, Untitled, February 14, 2012, 6:19 PM

Misrach is getting closer to making portraits of people as he zooms in on the faces of swimmers. He returned to the same hotel room where he photographed On the Beach (above) with a digital camera and telephoto lens. I don't know how I feel about those and am looking forward to seeing how they are received when he publishes them soon. I am so enamored with the vulnerable human surrounded by the sea (substitute me), I am not sure I want to know their identity.

6) SPE brought so many of my wonderful photo friends to Chicago some of which are pictured below.

 James Luckett, Laurie Blakeslee, and Amelia Morris

Adam Neese in the Empire Room

Mark A. Lee after winning the Richard Misrach raffle photograph

Sneaking an image of a famous photographer...

the back of Jerry Uelsmann's head.

Wishing I had a photograph of...

me talking to Richard Misrach about our meeting in 1996.

7) The biggest surprise I received will be featured in a post next week. I am not opposed to a sneak peek however:

Chris Toalson's A Long Overdue Artist's Book, 2011-2013