Stanley Greene

I went to go hear/see Stanley Greene last night at SFAI. I think that by far his work and his passion as a photographer has made the greatest impression on me from all of the lectures that I have gone to this semester. He is a photojournalist and made the disclaimers that it isn't a glamourous, exotic, well-paid adventure. His presentation of Chalklines- A Russian Opera, was a short film of stills from his ten years of documenting the war in Chechnya and its people. His work was an amazing body of portraits in this country and his presentation made it apparent that having to worry about snipers and bombs going off constantly is a serious stress that war/conflict/photojournalists have to contend with. He has started an agency for "photographers without borders" called NOOR, which he hopes 'will bring light to the darkest of places in the world'. It is a vital job that he holds and I don't think that it is appreciated enough what photojournalists of this caliber experience to capture the stories that they do. He spoke about one experience that haunts him, of men clubbing two figures, setting them aflame, then dragging them through the streets and then hanging them. He was brought in by these insurgents to photograph this act. These men and women suffer unimagiable horrors and risk their lives to bring us news. How can someone depict humans in such acts of evil and remain untouched? How can we?

www.noorimages.com

Jillian Granger lunchtime lecture

Back in September I went to the lunch time art lecture featuring work by Jillian Granger. Her artwork, paintings mostly, are interesting in that they focus on her childhood memories. She painted whatever she remembered about her childhood, the way her room looked and how cluttered it was and I especially like the one where she imagined different designs appearing in the wallpaper. I think she saw tootsie rolls. Her work is mostly about memories and dreams, which I think can be both very interesting and difficult. It's interesting to see how someone's memory of something is affected by time and most of what she paints is from years ago and she has that long time to influence what she initially saw. She has paintings of how she remembered her grandmother's bathroom, and her mom's collection of horses, and her father's peanut butter crackers and, of course, the tootsie roll wallpaper; it would be interesting to be able to compare her representations with the actual things. Dreams are interesting for obvious reasons because dreams are crazy and it's fascinating to experience other people's dreams or at least what they remember of it and she seemed to remember a pack of Elmos swimming in a bathtub.

Better late than never...

These are the pictures from the assignment early on in the semester where we had to take 100 pictures and then just one picture. I chose a spot by the bridge in between the art building and the alumnae house (picture on the bottom right) for the 100 pictures. I wanted to choose a place where I could get a lot of pictures and by choosing the fence, I was able to get pictures of the creek. The picture I chose (picture on the bottom left), however, didn't take advantage of that. I placed the camera on the ground in the plants and took a bunch of pictures from a low perspective. I like to think this must be what it's like to be a bug. I think I set the white balance on this one to tungsten to see what would happen and I think it changes the mood of the picture. It was a bright day and that sunny feeling has been lost by the blueish tint, which is usually reserved for cop shows, but maybe this bug is feeling blue.

For the second picture (top picture) I chose this tank that looked like it was made from large Lego's that was sitting by this huge tree also by the alumnae house. I believe this was someone's art project, as they often seem to find their way to the foliage surrounding the art buildings, but this one is very easy to miss as it is so low to the ground and well concealed by the plants. This picture was also taken low to the ground and could be the perspective of a bug, but I like it because you almost miss seeing the thing even though it's staring at you right in the face.

Shopdropping: It is what it sounds like.

After the Eyebeam lecture, where the seven fellows and residents discussed what projects they were working on, they held a few workshops in which they divulged a few trade secrets. They had workshops on how to throw a good party, something about listening, and some others, but I was mostly interested in learning about shopdropping. Although, learning how to throw a cool party was kind of tempting, too. Shopdropping gives you the opportunity to leave your artwork in stores so as to share it with the public in a more personal way, for the person who finds it anyway, however, that person will probably be all kinds of confused. The guy's approach to teaching how to shopdrop was by teaching how to shoplift; I found that very entertaining. He told us how to act, what not to do and such, so as not to attract attention to ourselves. He had had a job looking for shoplifters, so he knew what behaviors would attract the attention of the security. We also shared our own ideas of what we may want to leave in stores; I thought it might be fun (for me and for the person who ended up buying it) to fill up the extra space in cereal boxes with extra toys. The kid who received that cereal box would think he won the lottery. While I really like the idea of leaving things I created in stores for other people to find and be entirely confused by, I probably wouldn't be brave enough to actually go through with it.

Eyebeam: loads of fun

Eyebeam was by far the most interesting and fun lecture of this semester, despite its length. You knew right away it wasn't going to be anything like the rest of the lectures thus far, or like any lecture you've ever attended, when they started the day by exchanging profanities and discussing how they constantly curse during their lectures. No stuffy, pretentious self-proclaimed art aficionados here. The focus of Eyebeam is to bring art and technology together providing a safe and encouraging environment at their facilities in New York and also to extend their practices to the neighborhood around them. They have after school programs, in which high school students are allowed to use their equipment and space for their own projects and some of the projects that these people discussed required outside participation. One of them put together an event where people, kids mostly, created armor out of cardboard boxes only to destroy them in a massive street brawl. Another of them turned throwing parties into an art form and even held a workshop on how to throw a great party. One of my favorite of the projects discussed was the boozebot, which is a robot that provides party goers with drinks and conversation, and even compliments if you are lucky enough. One of their most impressive endeavors was passing out a fake (but very realistic) issue of the New York Times which proclaimed that the war had ended and issues such as global warming were being solved. It had an appropriate tag line that stated this is the news they wish to print. I was thoroughly impressed by how much work they had put into this project and how far they had taken it by distributing them to people on the streets ( for free, of course). I really enjoyed hearing about the different projects each fellow or resident was working on and how each seemed to incorporate community involvement, be it people in their direct neighborhood or from their virtual neighborhood. Their goal seems to be to bring people together through art and technology, whether to focus on important issues or to just find creative ways to party.

Debra Pincus

I have to agree with Weyam's assessment of the Debra Pincus lecture. If I learned anything from this lecture, it was that some people are so interested in the development of different fonts that they have based their entire career on studying the styles that have emerged from various places. Who knew font could have such an impact? In this lecture, however, she focused on just the Roman square capitals seen primarily on architecture and how those eventually developed into the more rounded uncials. (To be perfectly honest, as the lecture went on and she started to mention other font types, they all started to look the same to me and I started to create my own artwork on my notes.)

I, too, was astonished at the turn out for a lecture on font, when previous weeks had such vibrant and exuberant artists as Adrienne Salinger and Favianna Rodriquez, which were no where near as crowded as this lecture. I think that the most interesting aspect of her lecture (or the only part that stood out) was when she showed a slide of a tombstone that had integrated the uncials with the square capital. Following the lecture, someone mentioned this very slide and people gave some possible theories as to why this was done. When they mentioned this very slide, I had to wonder if this was the only moment of the lecture they actually remembered, which was the case for me. Debra Pincus also shared a little anecdote in which she watched a woman carve something (using the square captials) into a wall and the woman asked her why she would want to watch her do this. Why, indeed.

Girl Who Wed Another Girl

Girl Who Wed Another Girl: Pre-1950 Gay, Lesbian & Transgender Marriages in the U.S. is a small photographic exhibit that is currently at the San Francisco Main Library. This exhibit shows about 16 photographs, newspaper clippings, court documents and marriage licenses for about four or five documented same-sex marriages.

I think that this is a large topic that was just barely skimmed in this show. I think that with the extensive access to the local archives at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco, that whomever put this show together could have found further material to further build the historical references that they were drawing.

I found the exploration of gender informative, specifically with the given time period. That women would literally choose to take male names in order to live as men, marry women and/or because at least one woman felt like she had always been assigned the wrong sex at birth really relevant to the times that we are living in. It is phenomenal that a man would be able to marry three times to different men and live as a wife to these men and not have the public know of his biological sex until his death.

Specifically, I felt that it was a good beginning to show some understanding of gender differences and how things have changed socially, if only for the worse. The women whom were investigated were charged with misrepresenting themselves, simply impersonation. However, the idea, at least at that time, that there was something "wrong" with same-sex marriage apparently wasn't as widespread as it is today based on how judges and juries settled these cases. However, the newspaper articles are rather limited and redundant. I would like to know what exactly has changed in our society, (the Cold War, Sexual Revolution?) that would cause us to go backwards, from acceptance to intolerance?