Jody Forster

Jody Forster is a landscape photographer, focusing on the environment out West. He studied photography with Ansel Adams and Oliver Gagliani. He has traveled and photographed on three different continents, including North America, Asia, and Antarctica. In 1992 and 1995 he was selected by the National Science Foundation to participate in the U.S. Antarctic Artist and Writers Program. 

  

"Forster’s imagery captures that atmospheric sense of place that occurs where the sky meets the land. The relationships between light and shadow, land and cloud formations, mountains, rock formations and plant life that recall the grandeur of nineteenth-century American painting" (ethertongallery.com).

"Using an 8 x 10" view camera to bring about meticulous realism, atmospheric effects, and a precise rendering of forms, Forster photographs a luminescence in nature in which he adds aspects of realism, idealism, and technical virtuosity" (andrewsmithgallery.com).

When I first looked at this artist's work I was struck by the simple beauty of his images. I love the fact that Forster still uses an 8"x10" camera and produces his prints in the darkroom. Some of his images are as big as 20"x24". Last semester I had been experimenting with making my own paper and printing on it in the darkroom. I really enjoyed getting back into the darkroom and being able to physically hold my paper and create the print on my own. I plan on working in the darkroom more this semester and hopefully having all of my final prints made in the darkroom, even the color images. I also appreciate his sense of adventure. I would love to go to Antarctica and photograph. His images from his time there are absolutely amazing.

www.antarctic-circle.org/fox.htm

http://www.andrewsmithgallery.com/home.html

(Jody Forster doesn't have his own website but all of his information can found at the site above)

Vast

-adjective
1. of very great area or extent; immense
2. of very great size or proportions; huge; enormous

"I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. He sees himself against nature. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile" (John Shelby Spong).

"There is something bigger than fact: the underlying spirit, all it stands for, the mood, the vastness, the wildness" (Emily Carr). 

Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. London: Routledge and Paul, 1958. Print.

The idea of vastness goes with the work I'm creating now because my work has shifted from more abstract views of nature to landscapes. With the landscapes I'm shooting now I'm trying to capture the vastness of the environments I'm in. When I'm surrounded by an epic landscape I end up getting lost in it; I can just stare into the horizon forever, in awe. I'm hoping my images will do that for my viewers; that they can just stare and get lost in the images. I hope that my viewers will feel the same connection to these environments as I do. 

Roni Horn

Horn was born in New York in 1955. She received her B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and her M.F.A. from Yale University. She works in many mediums including sculpture, photography, and drawings. Her work "embodies the cyclical relationship between humankind and nature—a mirror-like relationship in which we attempt to remake nature in our own image" (art21.org). Drawing is a key aspect of her work because it the act of drawing is all about composing relationships.
"Horn crafts complex relationships between the viewer and her work by installing a single piece on opposing walls, in adjoining rooms, or throughout a series of buildings. She subverts the notion of ‘identical experience’, insisting that one’s sense of self is marked by a place in the here-and-there, and by time in the now-and-then" (art21.org). Horn has received a Guggenheim fellowship and has exhibited work at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

I chose Roni Horn for my blog because we share similar concepts with our work. In a way, the work I'm making feeds into her concepts. In a way I am remaking nature in my own image. I'm shooting the photographs in a documentary style but I'm choosing how to frame images and what to show and what not to show, so in my own way I'm photographing my environments how I want them to be seen or how I think would make them look the most beautiful. I also really enjoyed her methods of presenting work. I like the idea of having a piece in each room or in each building and having a separate experience in each environment. That is the same kind of experience I want to create for my viewers.

"So XII", 1998

"Some Thames", 2000

"Still Water (The River Thames, for Example)- Image J", 1999

"Untitled (Yes), Black", 2000

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/horn/clip1.html

http://www.hauserwirth.com/

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/horn/

Handmade

Last semester I had started experimenting with creating my own paper and printing on it using Liquid Light. I was very satisfied with the results and I'm confident that I can create  good prints using these materials. It's going to take a lot more experimenting to get the timing down right but I feel like I'm close to figuring it out. I really like the idea of using handmade paper. It makes me feel more connected to the images I'm showing, since I have imagery placed on paper made of entirely natural materials. I feel more of a connection to my work when I get to use my hands and create the materials I'm going to be using.

"He must approach nature directly and simply, with concentration that is absolute. He dissects only that particular fragment of nature which is before him, and that unconsciously. 'the precious sensation of closeness to nature is so fleeting and so fickle, so often not there at all, and so frightened, that it is easily scared away by the cold voice of the man with a rule to follow" (Beatty, John; The Relation of Art to Nature 1). 


"My purpose in writing this treatise is to establish, if this be found possible, a foundation for the belief that the art of the painter and sculptor is imitative, not creative; that the great masterpieces of art which have withstood the test of time rest firmly upon the supreme expression of character and beauty as these qualities are revealed in man and nature; that it is the mission of art to reveal and make plain these rare and lovely qualities" (Beatty, John; The Relation of Art to Nature 2).

Beatty, John Wesley. Relation of Art to Nature. [S.l.]: General, 2010. Print.

PDN Competition