Lukas Felzmann

Lukas Felzmann was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1959. He received his MFA at San Francisco Art Institute. Felzmann is a photographer, sculptor, and installation artist. A lot of his work focuses on nature, especially his newest series "about the Sacramento Valley as place and metaphor by documenting a marsh altered through agriculture" and development (art.stanford.edu). His work focuses on the intersection of nature and human culture. Through his work, "our environment appears dissected, condensed into stacks of books and strung with wires, threatened but ultimately triumphant as it tears apart and floods our roadways and topples our houses. Yet far from aggressive, his art is subtle, metaphorical and based in a world which seems to elude easy categorization" (greenmuseum.org).

I chose to research this artist for a couple of different reasons. His work primarily focuses on nature, which is what my work is focusing on as well. He exposes the connection between the natural world and human civilization and what we do to control it. Ultimately, nature prevails though. Through my work, I'm trying to expose my connection to nature and my environment through abstracted surreal imagery. Also, he is an installation artist. I've been thinking about how I will present my final work and I've considered doing an installation with projections. Looking at other multimedia artists and their final presentation is really helpful when I think about how I will present my pieces.

http://www.lukasfelzmann.com/felzmann.html

http://www.sloanfineart.com/index.html

http://www.lukasfelzmann.com/index.html

Cary Street Gym Art Space

I just applied to the Cary Street Gym Art Space call for art. If picked I will get to exhibit 7-10 pieces of work in the gym. I'll be hearing from the committee in a few weeks. Wish me luck!

Biophilia

The Biophilia hypothesis suggests that "there is an instinctive bond between human beings and other living systems" (wikipedia.org). This word literally means a love of life or living systems. I think this pretty accurately describes the reasoning for my work. I love nature. I love animals. I love people. I love life. All of these things interest me. And that is why I want to do what I'm doing. I want to capture nature and hopefully get across my feelings through my photographs. American biologist Edward O. Wilson popularized this term in his book Biophilia. He describes it as "the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life" (wikipedia.org).

         "And it occurred to me that evening that one of the things about the world is that it is largely        indifferent to the human stories that we weave. We may be, as I have said before on this blog, storytellers by nature; but nature itself is not story-like. And because the stories that we weave can so often be limiting, can so often trap us, or can so often simply go over the same old ground, again and again, this attention to the world can loosen the bonds a little, can give us over to a kind of thinking that can help us find new paths and tracks through the world" (thinkbuddha.org).

I'm not sure if I want to tell a story with my images. Maybe I do. I think right now I have hit a bit of a roadblock. I'm not sure what to do next. All I can do at the moment is keep meditating, be out in nature, and shoot. I found out about this hypothesis on accident. I was researching on thinkbuddha.org and came across the term in a blog entry. It was kind of crazy how much it related to what I'm doing now and what I want to keep doing with my work.

Wilson, Edward O. Biophilia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1984. Print.

Florian Maier-Aichen

Florian Maier-Aichen was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1973. He earned his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. His work could be described as "alternately romantic, cerebral, and unearthly" (pbs.org/art21). Aichen digitally alters his photographs to the point where they are more like drawings than documentation. However, he embraces many different techniques to photograph. He chooses to use equipment with light leaks that double expose occasionally. He is interested in the areas where landscape and cityscape meet, so he "chooses locations and subjects from the American West and Europe—from his own neighborhoods to vistas of the natural world" to photograph (pbs.org/art21).

I have chosen this artist because his work is somewhat similar to mine, although our ideas may be a little different. I too am interested in nature and my relationship to it. Along with my interest in nature, I am interested in figuring out my relationship with the city I live in too. Is it possible to feel as lost in a city as I feel in nature? Or vice versa? I like the fact that he experiments with his photography. He doesn't try to use super nice equipment, he would rather take a chance and use cameras that may leak light or double expose a few shots. I'm approaching my project with this same intention. I use a Diana camera that isn't entirely reliable. It tends to leak light and "mess up" my images in various ways. But this is the kind of thing I'm looking for. I like my images to look raw and organic. I think that helps out a lot when it comes to my ideas and what I'm trying to go for.

Interview: http://blog.art21.org/2010/07/09/florian-maier-aichen-rejecting-tradition/

http://www.303gallery.com/artists/florian_maier-aichen/

www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/florian_maier_aichen.htm
www.pbs.org/art21

Black and White Images

Wanderer

The Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu uses the word yu, which means to wander, or a wandering. He describes a metaphor for life as a "totally free and purposeless journey" (p 6). This is how man should wander through life, just enjoying creation and not becoming attached to anything material. Another part of his philosophy was the idea of wu-wei, or inaction. This is "a course of action that is not founded upon any purposeful motives of gain or striving. All human actions become as spontaneous and mindless as those of the natural world" (p 6).

Reading Tzu's work has been really beneficial to my work and has aided me in furthering what I'm doing. I really like the quote about human action becoming spontaneous. That is kind of the direction my work has been going the past few times I have been shooting. I go places, not intending to shoot something in particular. I end up just wandering around, till I feel comfortable wherever I am. Sometimes this doesn't take long at all, other times I have to sit there, in silence, meditating or writing or just thinking. When I start shooting, it is very spontaneous. My camera ends up feeling like an extension of my hands. Everything I have been shooting is very organic and in the moment, which is something I really enjoy.

Zhuangzi, and Burton Watson. Basic Writings. New York: Columbia UP, 1964. Print.