Wynn Bullock
William Clift (click picture for bigger version!)
First things first, thanks to Blake for including me (just like me to come in 11th) in his list of interesting blogs. Being a fickle female (la donna e mobile / qual piuma al vento!) my favorites shift like the wind, but at the moment, one blog that doesn’t get talked up enough is Thomas Prior’s, which I found through Ms. Hulin. He features mainly his own work. What I like is that he doesn’t write too much, but often says a little bit about an outtake, or how and where he did or didn’t get a shot. Very process.
And thanks to Miki over at Livebooks for including me in a couple (Consumption, Innovation) of the crowd-sourced photobook posts that you’ve no doubt seen by now. Really exciting topic, and collaboration is always awesome.
On a more personal note, another quarter’s begun and I’ve been occupied with the administrative and logistic juggling that happens at the beginning of each term. So far the quarter is looking very exciting. In addition to the large format 4×5 class with Joel Leivick where I saw the images above and where we are just getting our hands on holders and cameras, I’m also taking an incredibly interesting class called “Light as a Sculptural Element,” taught by Elaine Buckholtz, who not only designed sets for Meredith Monk and Merce Cunningham back in the day, but also makes her own sound/motion/light sculptures. She seems intent on getting us to experiment with any and all aspects of light, from using point sources to building sun scopes or projecting images and combining everything with sound or motion. Part of the class will involve everyone keeping journals – blog, video playlists, etc – of concepts and artists they find along the way, so I will likely incorporate that into this blog. I’m curious to see what others come up with. I’ve never quite had a class where curiosity and effort mattered so much more than the final results, and my brain is already filled with different things I want to try – hopefully several of them will be affordable and feasible. I can’t believe I get credit for playing around with light.
This class is a total undiscovered gem. They need to rename it something exciting like “Light-fueled Brain Explosions.” Guess they need it to be more academic than that…
Then there is a seminar with sculptor Chris Bell on the practical aspects of being an artist. The plan is to make sandwiches at the beginning of each class and go on the occasional excursion to a museum or functioning studio. There is another seminar, which I haven’t made it to yet, where students in the department show works in all different media. Looks to be a good term to put feelers out into multimedia. The only thing is that much of this 3D and light media seems completely tied to the in-person experience and probably comes off horribly unimpressive through recorded representations.
As if that wasn’t enough, I’m also taking a couple of non-graded classes from the Civil and Environmental Engineering department about water issues – one in preparation for a spring break trip to several places along the Colorado River, and the other focused on general engineering and social issues, with local infrastructure as examples. The spring break trip includes tours of dams as well as a visit with Navajo nation to hear that side of the story, among other things, so these next few months are gonna be jam-packed! It’s hard enough to convince my brain to sleep as it, but now I’ve really got no chance.
The trip prep course unfortunately bumped a small seminar I wanted to take with Lukas Felzmann, whose teaching style I find very helpful and fun. I’ve taken a couple of his classes already and I wish I could take one every quarter. I should really do a review of his dense and teeming new book, Waters in Between at some point. For now, take a look at Jeff Ladd’s review and Douglas Stockdale’s review (the book is also one of Doug’s top photobooks of 2009).
Phew, too much name-dropping! More on the content of the classes as they unfold.
BONUS ROUND: Speak of e-readers, looks like Plastic Logic is getting pretty close to the launch of its Que reader, which utilizes a plastic instead of glass display, making it lighter. It sounds interesting, but is prohibitively expensive right now ($650 for the 4GB and $800 for the 8GB 3G version). There are apparently some advantages to this expense though: “Organic transistors can be made at much lower temperatures than those made with conventional silicon, which means it’s possible to print them on top of lightweight, flexible plastic instead of glass. Though the display itself is flexible, it’s encased in rigid plastic. The advantage of the flexible plastic display is that it’s nearly unbreakable.”
