The Altered Subject

Okay, so I'm pretty sure this is the last prescribed sort of assignment I'll be getting from my Junior Workshop instructor, David.  We were to alter our subject in some way without using Photoshop.  I had the toughest time coming up with something.  I've been pretty out of my element and out of it in general for a couple of years now, so I didn't know how to handle this.  I had a couple of ideas, but they were weak at best and still not "me".  So, I talked with my instructor, he gave a few examples of what the concept means, and I said, "well, the last thing I was doing that really worked for me were these little set-ups".  He said, "Well, there you go."  I think I was able to visualize what I wanted to do within minutes of the end of that conversation.  That was a just a few days ago, and the assignment was due today.  I had two weeks to do this, and spring break was one of them, so if I'd known what I wanted to do, I could have gotten many more than just the three images done.  I thought I was done with the set-ups, but I like how these turned out.  I think I'll finish out the semester with this work and make it my final.  Should be fun--tons of work, but fun.

I started these at 3am and worked through to nearly 1pm.  The furniture in the rooms is purchased dollhouse furniture which I have painted to make look aged and used.  I wanted the rooms to look run down, colorful, textural, and off-kilter.  My subject here is still life, but I've tried to make it look a little more surreal.  Strange thing, a couple of days after I spoke to David, I took one of those ridiculous Facebook quizzes.  This one was "which painting are you?"  The result was Magritte's Son of Man.  Silly, but it was like an omen.  I wanted the still lifes to overpower the rooms they were in to transform them into completely new objects.  Just something a little ambiguous, unexpected, odd, and maybe a little uncomfortable.  The rooms feel a little oppressive to me.  I wanted the color to be both muted and intense, hence the browns mixed with the almost neon colors.  I like that play.  I also like the way the vibrant freshness of these fruits and veg contrast with the dirty surroundings--feels kind of like hope to me, and they elevate the importance of their surroundings in that respect for me.  The fruit and veg were attached to the boxes they were in via large screws jutting into the boxes from behind.  I wanted them to appear to be floating--just there, like that's where they should be in that environment.

.....I could go on and on about this, but I have reading to do and am already feeling sleep taking over......

  

The Altered Print

There is a longstanding project or  topic I've been considering and working on in bits and pieces for a while now.  A few months ago, I came across this little book in an antiques mall.  It's titled Addison's Sir Roger DeCoverley.  It was published in 1917, but I believe the story predates that.  As I started thumbing through the book, I found many parallels between this character's situation with a pretty, highly intelligent, and ultimately deceptive widow, and a situation of my own.

This work is part of recent assignment I had at UArts.  It was titled. "The Altered Print".  It was designed to get students to consider all portions of their work, from start to finish: shooting, processing, and the final print.  The final print was to be altered in some way, and concept was to be considered when making the decision as to how to alter these prints.  I shot the images digitally, then made a print.  I altered that first print by applying a solvent (of sorts) to the ink so I could move it around a bit.  I tried to make them look like monotypes at this stage.  I then put these altered prints back through the printer.  I made a high contrast version of each image with text taken from the book and printed that on top of each of the altered prints.  I wanted them to resemble handmade illustrations which might belong in a book, reflecting the source of the text, the story in it, and my own vague little tale.  It was also important to me that these have an altered digital feel to them.  I like the idea of hand-manipulating something digital which itself makes the notion of manipulating the hyper reality of photography a problem for people today.  My intent here was to obscure the obvious, to confuse, to be vague, and to allow the viewer to draw his own conclusions.  I think I may have obscured things a little too much, and perhaps erased more than I would have liked of my own story.  My situation is my own though, and no one can ever really know another's experience.