Gambol

Come see two of my How I Will Die pieces at Art League Houston this Friday. 500 entries and both of mine were chosen. Woo!

Artist Statements

I've long thought that artist statements can make or break a piece. So many times a piece of art can be made much more interesting by knowing more about it. Today's 20x200 piece is an example of the opposite of that.

http://www.20x200.com/art/2010/10/untitled-from-the-series-owner-of-this-world.html

The Center for Fine Art Photography

My Avoid the sun between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. image has been selected for an exhibition called New Normal at The Center for Fine Art Photography in Ft. Collins, CO. 750 images were submitted and 50 were chosen. (Yay, me!)

The juror was Edward Robinson who is the Associate Curator of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). He was also the former Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Curatorial Fellow in the Dept. of Photography at MoMA and curated a bunch of shows there. Wow!

Museum Collection!

I've made it into my first major museum collection! Last night was the first annual Gift of Gift of event where people could vote on photographs to be purchased and donated to the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. An image from my How I Will Die series was on display and was one of the 8 chosen for purchase. YAY!! So, barring something going wrong (knock on wood) in the aquisition process, I'm in. Woo! I'm gonna be famous now.

Thank you soooo much to my friends, family and complete strangers who came and voted for me. I love you guys!

Vote for Kristy

Come vote me into the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston collection!

Cremaster Cycle

This weekend, I went to see the Cremaster Cycle by Matthew Barney at the Dobie Theatre in Austin. The cycle consists of 5 films that total about 7 hours and is mostly about testicals. Like the art nerd that I am, I took diligent notes during the show. I thought I’d share my thoughts on each and some of my crazy notes.

Cremaster 1 alternated between 2 blimps and a football field with dancers on it. Inside the blimps were tables with a lady underneath. The lady would arrange grapes into patterns and the dancers on the football fields would make the same formations.

Crazy notes taken during film:

“White tablecloth, testicle looking sculpture, green grapes”

“Giant lady under table digs hole in table and gets grapes”

“Grapes fall out of shoe”

Cremaster 2 was my least favorite. It had a ton of different stuff going on and none of it seemed to connect. First there was a couple and an older lady at a table. Then there was sex with lots of bees. When the guy pulled out, the end of his penis was a beehive. Then there a crazy drummer covered in bees and 2 Ford Mustangs connected with a tunnel. Then a guy got shot and some cowboys dance. It was weird.

Some of my favorite notes from this one include:

“Woman puts yellow powder on inner thigh”

“Beehive in end of sex penis”

“Man in car has red swollen eyes”

“Dancing man and woman in cowboy hats around saddle in old walled room”

“Stuffed goat inside giant log cabin”

“Houdini becomes part of cage”

Cremaster 3 is the only one that I had seen part of before. In grad school, we watched a section where Matthew Barney must get through different obstacles to get to the top of the Guggenheim. I really liked the part I had seen so this is the reason why I wanted to watch the whole thing. This film actually wound up being my second to least favorite. The whole film was 2 main sections: ascending the Chrysler building and ascending the Guggenheim and a small section involving cave men.

Weird notes:

“Giant caveman east mice and has gold finger”

“Cars crash into car with dirt lady inside”

“Silver dressed lady in room with potatoes and cat”

“Wrinkled rubber tube comes out of his butt, teeth and goo flow from tube”

“Serra throws melted Vaseline”

Cremaster 4 was my favorite of the 5. It was also the first one of the cycle that he made. It flashed between Mathew Barney dressed as a satyr tap dancing his way through a building on the end of a pier and a drag race between two phallic shaped motorcycles with sidecar. Barney taps so much in one spot that he creates a whole in the floor and falls through into the ocean. Then he finds himself in a narrow goo filled tunnel that he must crawl through. The film ends with a shot of his crotch with clips attached the area where his balls should be. The clips have ribbons coming off them that are attached to each of the motorcycles.

Favorite notes from this one include:

“Slime balls come out of racing outfits”

“Wheel with balls goes onto blue racer”

“Barney buried in white pearls then white goo”

“Crotch with clamps and strings”

Cremaster 5 consisted of an opera singer and under water fairy nymphs. There was also Matthew Barney with another crotch prosthetic. At the end, there were ribbons attached to his crotch and birds flying away with the other ends. There was also a guy on a horse that jumped off a bridge in the end.

Crazy notes:

“Red guards uncover pink ribbon man’s face”

“Black cloak male is nude with large white belt thing”

“Vaginal hole under opera sings leads to hole”

“Nude man, no penis, only balls, petals on legs”

“Pink ribbon guy gets to end of stage and melts”

“Underwater fairies kiss man and put ball in his mouth”

“Goo from opera lady’s mouth drips into pool”

Anyway, I’m really glad I got to see the whole thing. I feel like a more complete artist now.

How I Will Die and Everything has its Place

It was a busy art weekend. In addition to going to a two day class to learn Lightroom, I went to two fun receptions. The first was my own show, How I Will Die. It was actually a closing for us. I organized the show and I am super happy with how it turned out. Here's me with my work.

The artists in the show were: (from left to right) Laura J. Bennett, Jennifer L. F. McNichols, David McClain, Rachel Hewlett, me, An Nguyen, Emily Peacock and Matthew Manalo.

On Saturday, the UH seniors had their senior show. Most of this group was in the very first class I taught at UH so it was really cool to see what they've made since then. Here are some of them. Thanks to Monica Kressman for letting me gank her images from her facebook page to use here.

Charlotte Boman

Dena Wallace

Rowan Bigham

Stephanie Gobea

How I Will Die - THIS FRIDAY!

Don't forget! This Friday is a reception for the group show I'm participating in in conjunction with Fotofest 2010 called "How I Will Die." The reception will be Friday, March 26 from 7:00pm to 9:00pm at the Annex Gallery at HCC-SW. The address is 13645 Murphy Road, Suite 250, Stafford, Texas. Hope to see you there!

Evening with the Artists

I had a table at Fotofest's Evening with the Artists last night. It went pretty well. More people seemed to like my work there than during my actual reviews. It was pretty awkward standing behind a table while hundreds of people walked by and looked though.

The Meeting Place wrap up

So The Meeting Place was an interesting experience. Two years ago, I did it for the first time. It was a great experience. People were very enthusiastic about the work and I got my work into a gallery. This time was not as good. The reviews were very mixed, with about half saying the work was too conceptual and the other half saying it was too literal. I'm not sure how it could be both. I was also told that my work is conceptually immature from one reviewer and another asked if I was in therapy. In hindsight, I wish I had not done it this year. I didn't have enough new work to show and wasn't prepared with enough questions for the reviewers. Oh well, live and learn.

One cool thing did happen though. Mary Virginia Swanson, who specializes in marketing was a reviewer. She was super prepared and had already looked at my website before I sat down so she could give suggestions. She thought that it was cool that the blog section was so current because I had my list of reviewers posted and took a screen shot of it during the review. On Tuesday, she taught a marketing workshop. I wasn't able to go, but my friend, Jennifer, said that she showed my blog during the workshop. Awesome!

Time to write thank you notes...

The Meeting Place

This Friday is the official beginning of Fotofest Biennial 2010. I'm signed up to do the first session of The Meeting Place which is a giant portfolio review and also starts Friday. Check out my line up and wish me luck!

New photo

I'm working on a project involving medical supplies as a component of my How I will Die Series. I made this today. I call it Torture Devices.

Installing a show

I spent this weekend installing a show at the Annex Gallery at HCC Southwest. I've been the gallery coordinator there for two years. Most of the shows are faculty or student shows, but everyone once in a while I get to organize my own show. Last summer, I curated a show called Substance with 5 photographers that turned out really well. Since Fotofest is happening this year, I asked if I could organize a photo show and I got the go ahead.

My friend, David, has been toying with the idea of a project called "How I Will Die" for a few years now. The idea would be to explore ways that he, specifically, could go. One day, I was complaining about having no ideas of things to shoot, he suggested I shoot how I would die because it would be different than his. From there, we decided to make a group show of it. Now, the show includes 10 artists of varying demographics.

So, I installed it this weekend and discovered why curators aren't suppose to include their own work in shows. Oh well, now I know for next time.

Here's a sneak peek of the space.

The show is officially open Feb 22-Apr 1. We are having an artists reception March 26 from 7-9pm. The Annex Gallery is at 13645 Murphy Rd, Stafford, TX.

Kids today...

Today was family day at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Houston Center for Photography had a booth there. Since I am now part of the education department there, I got to man the table along with Rachel and Charlotte. We brought several old camera for the kids to look at and some film and stainless steel reels. The weirdest part of the whole thing was that none of the kids even knew what film was. It was weird and I felt old and kinda sad.

2010 Texas Citrus Fiesta Parade

My friend, David, is in grad school at SAIC and his MFA project is going to be about his hometown of Mission, Tx. Mission is in the Rio Grande valley and produces a lot of citrus and every year they have a citrus fiesta parade. So, this weekend, Rachel, Jane and I drove down to help with David's parade float. His goal was a build an 8-foot tall accordion, a bandstand, a light-up dance floor and a planter with cactus in it. When we arrived late Thursday night, only the bellows of the accordion were on the float.

All day Saturday we worked on the float. 14 hours of manual labor is hard. The coolest thing I got to do was play with a blow torch to burn the spikes off of the cactus.

When we ran out of time, the accordion and bandstand were done. We also made an awesome conjunto sign and decorated the float itself. There were also awesome pinatas that looked like David and Jane.

Everyone that worked on the float signed the back.

The theme of the float was conjunto music which comes from the valley and David has been kind of obsessed with lately. David had arranged for a band of old men to play on the float. The morning of the parade though, we found out that one of them had been taken to the emergency room. So, he called the Conjunto hall of fame and got a 17 year old girl who is pretty well known in that scene. She came at the last minute with her bajo sexto player. Gloria Jean and Raymond were awesome!

LOTS of people came out to the parade. Here are some of them.

There were suppose to be dancers on the float, but they also bailed. David, Jane, Rachel and I wound up on the float during the parade. It was really fun. :)

Top Photographers #1

And my #1 photographer is.... the collaboration of Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz. I first discovered their work while I was researching for my thesis show. They have a series called Travelers that is all about being away from home, which is what my work was about. I actually sent an email to them asking more about their work. Paloma wrote back and gave me some more background on her work and encouraged me on mine. I love that there is a big sculptural component to their work because I've always thought if I weren't a photographer, I would be a sculptor. Plus they are kinda quirky...

Top Photographers #2

My second favorite photographer was actually my first favorite photographer ever. It was the first work that I saw and was instantly in love with. I first saw his work at Photographs Do Not Bend gallery in Dallas, which holds a special place in my heart because we used to go on field trips there when I went to Austin College. The photographer is Chema Madoz. The first series I did in grad school was heavily influenced by his work. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I suppose. The little images on the web do not do justice to his work. Not only are the images interesting and thought provoking, but the prints themselves are gorgeous, some of the most beautiful black and white prints I have ever seen.

Top Photographers #3

My #3 choice is Michael Kenna. I'm generally not a fan of landscape photography, but I think his are just gorgeous.

Top Photographers #4

My number 4 photographer is Gregory Crewdson. He sets up these very elaborate scenes in which he controls everything. The thing that I like about his work is that it is so narrative. I love looking at the images and making up a story to go with them. They are very thought provoking for me.

Top Photographers #5 again

The problem with listing my 5 favorite photographers is that I really only have 2. The other 3 are pretty much always changing. My number 5 changed this weekend, hence writing about #5 again.
Four years ago, I was living in LA and I went to an event called PhotoLA which is basically a bunch of commercial galleries showing off the work they sell. One of the booths there was Photo Eye which is a book seller. I found this little book by a photographer I had never heard of. The book was a small paperback that came with a limited edition print. This is the print I chose to buy.

I noticed that the artists contact info was in the back of the book and I was so taken with the work that I even emailed him to let him know how much I liked it. He wrote back and was very kind.

Skip ahead 4 years, Friday night I was at HCP's annual print auction preview exhibition. I have a tradition of walking through the exhibition and decided what I would buy if I had any money and which piece is my absolute favorite. I do this without looking at the labels so I'm basing my decision only on the art itself. This year, this monkey picture is my favorite.

So, I go up to the piece to look at the label and turns out it was the same photographer that I found at PhotoLA: Hiroshi Wantanabe.

Top Photographers #5

This week I am going to count down my 5 favorite photographers.

My number 5 pick is very different than the other 4. His images are based in science rather than fiction. Harold Edgerton uses photography for motion studies. His images teach us about the way things move and are fascinating to look at.

New favorite artist (of the week)

When I was in San Diego for Christmas, my family and I went to see a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego of Tara Donovan's work. I wasn't familiar with her work but it looked cool online so we all went. It was amazing! She makes work out of everyday objects on a monumental scale.

This was the piece that was on the website and made me want to go see it. It's made of styrofoam cups.

This was my favorite piece in the show. It was made of millions of drinking straw stacked against a wall. Some were pulled out at different lengths from the wall of its had a wavy effect. The coolest thing though was that as you moved around it looked completely different. You could only see the holes in the straws you were right in front of. The holes make the straws look brighter so as you move around, the bright spot moves around also. It was very neat!

Top Photos #1

It's finally here: the reveal of my favorite photo I've ever taken. I took it my second semester in grad school when I finally figured out what having a concept in your images meant. It's the earliest photo that I'm the most proud of.

Top Photos #2

My second favorite photo I've ever taken is from my thesis show, Uncertain. I love this photo because it works really well on a couple of levels. First, it illustrates perfectly what the idea of the series is. It's probably the images that can best stand on its own from that series. Second, I think it's just gorgeous. The 4x5 gives so much detail that you can see more on the seed pods in the image than in real life. Even the viewer that doesn't look for meaning can still enjoy it.

RIP

I went to a memorial service for a very talented photography student this weekend.

Patrick, you will be missed.

Top Photos #3

Of my top five photos, this has the least of a story. It's actually just a picture I really like. It's from my Coming of Age series. A few birthdays ago, my sister got me a really cute fish tank so I went out and bought four guppies. Two of them died almost instantly so, rather than have them die in vain, I used them for art.

Top Photos #4

This photo is in my top 5 not because I love the photo, but because of what it represents. This is the very first photo I ever printed. It started my love of photography and being in the darkroom. It was taken in 2000 (Wow, this is my 10 year anniversary of being addicted to the darkroom) at Austin College. The assignment was to shoot an entire roll of the same subject. I chose eyes.

Top Photos #5

For the next 5 days, I'm going to count down my 5 favorite photos I have ever taken.

My number 5 photo was shot in 2005 in Los Angeles. When I got done with grad school, I made very few photos. I was so convinced that it was pointless to make a photo unless it fit into a series and had some deep meaning that I just didn't make any. One day, I decided that I was going to force myself to take some pictures so I went walking around this shopping center that was under contraction. I shot about half a roll of film and that was pretty much it. About a year later, after moving to Houston, I found a roll of 120 film that wasn't processed and I had no idea what was on it. I took it to be processed and found this image from that shoot. It's one of my favorites because it illustrates exactly how I was feeling at the time...completely blocked.