Thursday Posting: Artist's for Panel Review

For the panel review I am meeting with Page Bond, Julie Sanders, and Robert Hobbs.  Page Bond is the owner of Page Bond Gallery. The history of the gallery is found on the website, stating:  

"The Page Bond Gallery, first established in 1999 as the New Gallery in Nantucket, Massachusetts, relocated to Richmond, Virginia in 2001.  Featuring contemporary art in a wide variety of media and disciplines including painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, and ceramics, the gallery acts as a showcase for the work of emerging as well as established artists with local, national, and international reputations. "

The second person I am meeting with is Julie Sanders from the Martin Agency, who is the senior art producer.  The Martin Agency is is a renowned advertising firm, ranking #3 in the U.S, and represents companies such as Geico, Hanes, Walmart, and Seiko, to name a few. 

The third person I will be meeting with is Robert Hobbs, a professor at VCU who holds the Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair.  His website states:

Recognized as both an academic and a museum curator, Hobbs specializes in both late modern and post-modern art. His work joins social history with literary criticism, aesthetics, and feminist and postcolonial theory. He has published widely and has curated dozens of exhibitions, many of which have been shown at important institutions in the U.S. and abroad. His specific research areas span the twentieth- and twentieth-first centuries, and his publications include monographs on Milton Avery, Alice Aycock, Edward Hopper, Lee Krasner, Mark Lombardi, Robert Smithson, and Kara Walker. In addition to working on mainstream modern and post-modern artists, his published research includes in-depth studies of regional, self-taught, and Native American artists as well as investigations of contemporary and traditional craft media. Hobbs is a member of the Editorial Board of the Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, published by Oxford University Press. I am looking forward to getting feedback from these people, and I think their diverse backgrounds will give me a wide variety of advice and criticism.

Anderson Gallery Student Show

I entered two photographs, this is the one that got in:

Monday Entry: Matt Nighswander

Nighswander is an American-born artist working in Chicago.  He is best known for his photographs that “build stories from the streets of Chicago, transforming caught moments and characters with dream-like metaphors of modern life” (New Photographers 2007).  Born in New Hampshire, Nighswander attended university in New York, although he received no formal training in photography.  In his biography Nighswander states that his inspiration came from the great “street” photographers such as Robert Frank, Gary Winogrand, and Helen Levitt. After Nighswander became interested in photography, he worked for the Associated Press doing photo editing.  He was then accepted into the MFA program at Columbia College Chicago.  Currently Nighswander resides in New York.

Artist website:

http://www.mattnighswander.com/

Artist interview:

http://www.heyhotshot.com/blog/2007/01/07/an-interview-with-summer-hs-matthew-nighswander/

Thursday Posting: Building Architectural Models

Scale

"True architectural model making is mainly confined to 3 areas. Planning models, test and development models, sales models and occasionally exhibition models."

-Model Makers Resource

"Architectural Model Making." Model Makers Resource.

http://themodelmakersresource.co.uk/articles/article020.html

While the article talks about the three different forms of model making, the fully finished model is the one I'm interested in.  This model shows color and building details, along with "landscaping, window finishes, parking spaces, underground car parks, street lights, and all the street furniture we come to expect in our busy environments."  According to the article, this model is usually used not so much for planning but for scale development, and as exhibition center pieces.  This type of model is built out of a variety of materials, and the bases are typically wooden, while the actual buildings are laser cut from styrene.  Details such as balconies and landscapes can also be built from varying materials.  The article states: "Plants, trees, bushes and grass effects are created from many different materials depending on the scale and type of vegetation. Most items tend to be off the shelf, pre-made trees bushes and flowers."

Reading this article was interesting to look at scale-models from the maker's perspective.  The reason I have been doing this research is to more fully understand scale models, since some of my images are beginning to look like miniature versions of buildings.  Understanding the process that goes into making these models helps me in viewing my own images in these terms. So far, I have come to conclude that every little detail must be planned, and nothing left to chance.  This seems to reflect the attitude I take when creating my work.  

Monday Entry: Popel Coumou

Coumou is a photographer from the Netherlands who specializes in miniature interior environments.  According to New Photographers 2007, Coumou “constructs and captures two-dimensional interior environments in miniature.” Light, color, and space all play important roles in her work.  I really identify with her work because of the clean lines she maintains and her careful and controlled use of color.  However, her work is also quite different than mine in the way she uses light, which tends to add dimension and texture in her imagery. Coumou has had numerous exhibitions won many awards, so far all of which are European.  She attended the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 2004 for photography.  Not a lot of information was available on her, mostly articles in Dutch.  On the website Platform 21 they discuss Coumou’s process of creating images: “In the spaces Popel photographs, people are almost always absent. Her images are thus not narrative ones: only the division of the room, colour and the play of light create the hushed atmosphere.  She later builds 3D models of the rooms, using stark effects of light and shadow, and photographes them again. Sometimes she builds imagined or ‘virtualised’ miniature rooms of clay, paper and textile. She then photographs these as if the buildings can actually be entered.”

Artist website:

 http://www.popelcoumou.nl/work.php

Thursday Posting: Architectural Models

Miniature

“Scale Models are a basic mechanism used to understand, explore and conceptualize architecture.”

            -Albert C. Smith

Smith, Albert.  Architectural Model as Machine. http://books.google.com/books?id=2-9uqRbXk9IC&pg=PA112&lpg=PA112&dq=perfection,+architectural+model&source=bl&ots=JKsvgk5bIn&sig=peKEvoUT03e15NUia00MQHbctlM&hl=en&ei=zwDUScSzONLVlQeL5JnVDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#PPP6,M1

 

In his book Smith discusses the importance of architectural models and miniatures in general as an important part of the design process.  Smith’s book breaks down the architectural model into 5 parts: Define/Divine/Design, The changing mechanism of the scale model, Scale model as machine, Machine as scale model machine, Pandora and the modern scale model machine.  In his chapter about the model machine, Smith states: The model machine extends humanity’s modest ability to measure the perceived chaos of the unknown.  However, as Louis Kahn’s example reveals, without the perceived proportions offered by a trusted analogy to mediate, humans may find only a frightening loss of control over their understanding of the world.”

Reading excerpts from Smith’s book was very informative, as I have recently begin to look at my work as being miniature models of communities.  Smith’s essays on the functionality of models in the architectural design process gave me helpful information that will help me in developing a stronger thesis for my series. 

Monday Entry: Martin Wolf Wagner

Wagner is a German based artist who has been working as a freelance photographer since 2000.  He is well known for his landscape photography that combines light and color to create mysterious imagery. The Morning News in discussing Wagner’s nightscapes states: “With an eye for the solitude that comes with open landscapes, German photographer Martin Wolf Wagner shares a gallery of luminescent, moving images where nighttime doesn’t necessarily mean darkness.” Crown Dozen reviews his photos as “huge in scope, soothing in their quietness, and very, very solitary.”  In 2007 Wagner was named by Getty Images as one to watch.  Wagner currently resides in the countryside between Stuttgart and the Black Forest.  Not a lot of information was available as to the schooling of Wagner, but I was immediately drawn to his minimalist compositions and use of color.  I really enjoy how he as taken the nightscape and used color in such a way that has given the category new life and a less stereotypical meaning.

Gallery representing artist:

http://www.london-photographic-awards.com/site/lightbox2.php?type_f=3&user_id=6793&fid=0,8,250

Artist website:

http://martinwolfwagner.com/index.php?lng_ID=1&c=1,0,0,0,0&gcat=1

No artist interview available.