Michelle VanParys

Michelle VanParys received her B.F.A. degree from Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C.in 1982. She received her M.F.A. degree in photography from VCU in 1986. She has exhibited her work internationally and in the U.S. in shows like The South Carolina Triennal at the State Museum in Columbia, South Carolina. Her work was included in the international traveling exhibition and book titled The Altered Landscape. She has been the recipient of the Virginia Museum Fellowship and the South Carolina Arts Commission Fellowship. She is currently an associate professor at the College of Charleston in the studio art department.

"“Driving along the highways and byways of the Southwest and Interior West, Van Parys has noticed things that you or I might otherwise consider too trivial, too banal, to be worthy of further examination. Fortunately for us, Van Parys has taken the time to stop and line up her camera and take a photograph. By doing so, she makes us see things that would otherwise remain unseen. The final result is a poignant commentary not only on the desert landscapes to be found ‘out west,’ but also on the act of seeing the American West" (Batchen, Geoffrey).

Traveling from California, Nevada, and Utah through to Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, Van Parys trains her camera’s penetrating gaze on the hard-edged natural beauty of the West—and its constantly changing contemporary identity. Whether documenting the glitter of the ever-expanding metropolises of Phoenix and Las Vegas or the quiet reserve of Monument Valley, Van Parys’s images, she explains, seek to “juxtapose nineteenth-century notions of the sublime landscape with the way in which we live on the land today, thereby drawing attention to our uneasy alliance with the natural world" (Batchen, Geoffrey; Lippard, Lucy).


I really like the ideas behind VanParys' work. She has been working on her series, The Way out West, since the 80s. She takes photographs of the landscapes out West, places where humans have insinuated themselves. VanParys wants to show the ways in which we live on our land today and how that contrasts with the old ideas of our land being a paradise, showing our uneasy alliance with the natural world. I like how she makes her environmental message simple by showing these barren landscapes that have felt the touch of human hands. The artist states, "these photographs are portraits of the land constructed and altered by human presence" (michellevanparys.com). My message isn't really the same as hers but it is one that I considered early on in this process. Some of my earlier images did contain man-made pieces but they were things that were old and crumbling and falling apart, being taken over and reclaimed by nature.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/W/bo6166673.html

http://www.lassitergallery.com/

http://www.michellevanparys.com/index.htm

Collection

"A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it-by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir" (Sontag, Susan).

"having camera has transformed one person into something active, a voyeur: only he has mastered the situation. What do these people see? We don't know. And it doesn''t matter. It is an Event: something worth seeing-and therefore worth photographing" (Sontag, Susan).

"Photography has become one of the principal devices for experiencing something, for giving an appearance of participation" (Sontag, Susan).

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977. Print.

I've been thinking about Susan' Sontag's essay on photography ever since we talked about it in my Contemporary Issues class.Having a photograph of your experience is your way of showing the world that you had that experience, legitimating it for yourself. Last semester during my final critique, we talked about how my smaller images indicated preciousness and importance. I feel as if this is another aspect that is coming into my work, the idea that I am collecting these images to show my experiences in these places. I think for my final critique and exhibit I will have frames for every image, in a way that will like showcasing the experience and then compartmentalizing it for later memories.

Pipilotti Rist

Pipilotti Rist was born in Switzerland in 1962. She primarily works as a video artist. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles and Zurich. She studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Her work was first featured at the Venice Biennial in 1997. While in school, Rist began making Super-8 films which contained alterations of color, speed, and sound. Her work generally speaks about gender, sexuality, and the human body. She is considered a feminist to some.

"Like all of Ms. Rist's work, this new show has to be taken on its own very particular terms. She is, somewhat unfashionably in a jaded time and a jaded art world, one of life's instinctive celebrants. She loves the natural world as much as she enjoys punching its colors well into the realms of psychedelia" (Robert Ayers, observer.com).

"There's a sexual undertow in the work of Zurich artist Pipilotti Rist that's been there since the very beginning of her now-superstar career.Sexuality, delight and mystery have always been part of her work's allure" (Robert Ayers, observer.com).

I chose to research Pipilotti Rist this week after seeing her piece at the Anderson Gallery. I was blown away by what I saw. Her piece combined moving imagery as well as sound and she created a special environment just for watching her piece. This is pretty much exactly what I wanted to do and what I still want to do. I thought her sound design was perfect for what I was viewing. Immediately upon laying down on the carpet I got caught up in what I was watching and hearing; I felt myself getting lost in it. It was a really incredible feeling, truly inspiring and what I needed to see at a time when I' feel like I've been lacking inspiration.

http://www.contemporary-magazines.com/interview92.htm

http://www.luhringaugustine.com/

http://www.pipilottirist.net/

Assimilate

"Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture" (wikipedia.org).

"Every acquisition of accommodation becomes material for assimilation, but assimilation always resists new accommodations" (Jean Piaget).


Kidner, David W. Nature and Psyche: Radical Environmentalism and the Politics of Subjectivity. Albany, NY: State University of New York, 2001. Print.

I recently watched a video piece by Pipilotti Rist, where a female character is walking through nature, swimming, climbing trees. As she is walking, you see her blue tights start to transform into water. That whole idea of becoming part of nature, in that way, is really appealing to me. When I first started this project I played around with ideas of doing self-portraits or incorporating pieces of myself into images of nature. I really just like the idea of layering multiple images. I have a few ideas for when I work in the darkroom. I want to test out ways of layering organic materials into my images in the darkroom.

Jack Spencer

Jack Spencer is a self-taught American photographer'; he was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi.He is probably best known for his series, Native Soil, that featured deep sepia tones combined with Deep-South imagery. Spencer is known for heavily manipulating his images in the darkroom.He has had numerous solo and group exhibitions all over the U.S.

"I think that a brief description of my work is appropriate here, along with the disclaimer that I consider my work neither deep, nor meaningful in this context. It just is what it is and the viewer must reach his or her own conclusion about any "meaning"" (jackspencer.com, from his artist statement).

"Spencer has described his photographs as "metaphors that represent something primal in all of us." A master story teller, Spencer tends to place dominant subjects and objects, like the main characters of a short story, near the center of the picture plane. But the power of these images lies in what is not fully revealed. Each image contains clues, but not explanations of the drama unfolding" (Liz Kay, andrewsmithgallery.com).

I was first drawn to Spencer s work  when I was looking through images on the Andrew Smith Gallery' s website. He had many images of nature, landscapes, and portraits. All of his images were so ghostly and haunting, it was hard to look away. Spencer s work is beautiful and I love the fact that he hand manipulates all of his images in the darkroom. I would be interested in trying out his method of working or even another alternative method; different from ones I have tried with my work so far this semester.

http://www.andrewsmithgallery.com/exhibitions/jackspencer/jackspencer.htm

www.andrewsmithgallery.com/jackspencer

http://www.jackspencer.com/index.php?fade=no

Reality

Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or may be thought to be.^[1] In its widest definition, reality includes everything that is and has being, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible
          -Wikipedia.org

"Only conscious experience in the Now is real. Conscious experience in the Now is supposed to be known directly or intuitively, it can not be explained. I think it constitutes the basis of all ontology. Consciousness is conceived as the total of conscious experience in the Now..." (Axel Randrup).


"Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups—and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these pseudo-worlds right into the heads of the reader, the viewer, the listener" (Phillip K. Dick).


Bradley, F. H. Essays on Truth and Reality,. Oxford: Clarendon, 1914. Print.


Lately I've been thinking about the idea of reality and how much of it is constructed by humans. We are surrounded by millions of images every day, which shape how we think about things and places. Once you see something, that image is ingrained in your memory. It shapes what you think about a certain place. The photographer has a part in that. As a photographer, I construct scenes the way I want to see them. I like to work in a documentary style, capturing everything the way I see it and not moving things around. But still I can't capture everything, something is going to be left out and the way I frame the subject will hide certain things or leave other things out in the open. At the end of all this, I can try my best but there is no real way to capture reality or these environments that I put myself in. 

Skip Schuckmann

Skip Schuckmann is a nationally known environmental artist and radical. He sculpts homes and living spaces from the earth as well as ceremonial stone ampitheaters, called kivas. He has exhibited at Bard College in New York and has taught at Oberlin College in Ohio. Schuckmann was born in Arvada, Colorado. He received his bachelor in science degree in forestry and wildlife management from Colorado State University and his master's in teaching from the University of Massachusetts. He currently lives in Ojai, CA. He also works as a consultant for those wishing to live closer to nature. He will rearrange plants and trees or divert rivers to get houses more attuned to nature.

"I had become familiar with this thing called environmental art. I said this is about something nurturing the life force. It's all about the definition of environment. It's the 'I' plus what you are looking at. At some point the 'I' stops and the environment begins" (Skip Schuckmann). 


"For me, he is the greatest artist I can imagine. He knows all the aspects of living together with nature. It is not talk, talk, talk with him, it's real. It's living art in the deepest sense. It's basic survival, but in such a playful and beautiful way" (Gerhard Steinliger).


I chose this artist because of his close relationship to nature. His final product is nowhere close to what I do but I can appreciate what he does because of his deep connection to the environment. I also like his whole attitude towards life. He lives outside of our culture, creating environmentally friendly homes out of all organic materials. He doesn't try to conquer nature like so many of us do. He works with it to create something beautiful. I really like what Steinliger said, that Schuckmann's work is "living art." To me, that is an artist in the greatest sense of the word.

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/dec/04/local/me-11323


Because of the nature of Skip Schuckmann's work it cannot really be represented in galleries. However, he has exhibited work at Bard College.


avant-guardians.com/schuckmann/index.html