Park Fine Art Exhibition

"Chandelier," serigraphic print, 15"x20."

The above piece that I completed recently will be shown among the works of several other local and international artists this summer at Park Fine Art in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  This exhibition will also be shown at the Yu-Shin Museum of Art in Harbin, China and the Mujuanseong Country Club in South Korea.  The Albuquerque show opens August 5th, with the reception taking place August 19th.  Park Fine Art is located in downtown Albuquerque at 20 First Plaza NW, Suite 65, 87102.  I would like to thank the gallery owner Young-Sook Park for inviting me to participate in this exciting show, the 2011 Park Fine Art International Tour Show. 

Upcoming Exhibition

I have a ceramic piece being displayed in an upcoming exhibition in the Masley II Gallery in UNM's Masley Art Education Building.  Feel free to drop by and take a look at the work being shown.

Masley Art Education Building
Masley Gallery II Showcase
Untitled
Terracotta Stiff Slab Vase
April 2nd, 2011- May 1st, 2011

Upcoming Exhibition

 

Upcoming exhibition in the Fine Arts Library at UNM featuring two untitled works from my doll series.  The show opens March 4th, 2011 and there will be a reception/ talks by the artists in April 1st, 2011.  Please come!!

Portraiture in the Bosque

Silent Art Auction at Unser Discovery Campus

The Challenger Learning Center New Mexico will be having a Silent Art Auction honoring and remembering the family members of the Challenger Mission 51-L Crew on January 28, 2011 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., which will include one of my original photographs, as well as one of my original intaglio prints from my "Skeletal Fertility" edition variee.  Please feel free to attend.

Unser Discovery Campus
1776 Montano NW
Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, NM 87107
RSVP Requested
505-248-1776 x 732

Intaglio Fertility Projects

Here are some images of some of the printmaking I've been experimenting with over the past year or so...the images I'm showing here are from a number of different matrices, some are the traditional copper intaglio (aquatint, hard ground, soft ground, etc.), others are photo-polymer plates (something I've found really exciting- a great way for me to combine my photography with my printmaking), and many of them have chine collee incorporated (I xeroxed some of the images onto rice paper and then pressed them into the BFK when I printed them).  A lot of these prints are combinations of several different matrices, some designed to be together, others thrown together experimentally.  Most of these images deal with the same themes: fertility, femininity, and what those things mean to me.  I'm still working out how I feel about a lot of this work, but I've really fallen in love with intaglio.

This one shown above is a monotype I did about a year ago...before the idea for my back series ever even crossed my mind which is interesting.

This was my first intaglio matrix (shown above) and for some reason I keep coming back to it.

Back to the Beginning: Portraiture

 

In the past year or so, I have been working extensively with portraiture.  I have been inspired by the works of Diane Arbus, Annie Liebovitz, Jessica Todd Harper, Patrick Nagatani, Hans Bellmer, and many other artists who have explored the meaning of self, whether through portraying themselves or others.  Many of these artists construct elaborate scenes in order to create their images, others seem to be inspired by the immediacy of a genuine moment in time.  One project I seem to return to over and over again concerns the idea of portraying the individual by photographing the back.   

Throughout my back series, I explore the ideas of the macro and micro and our place within these two separate lenses.  I photographed the back on a micro level in which the hairs, bumps, and markings become a physical landscape, and then again on the macro level in which the back becomes a small piece of visual information within a vast literal landscape.

 

As I continued to shoot, working with literally thousands of separate images collected from a variety of subjects and situations, I began to explore the ideas of the body concerning muscle memory and the body being a record of life events, both physical and emotional.  Having photographed subjects from two years of age to adults in their thirties I began to see the toll life takes on the structures we inhabit.  I mean this, not in the physical sense, in which we are injured and scarred, but in the emotional sense in that our body records stress in the musculature, particularly the back.  

 

 

These realizations caused me to consider whether people realize what they reveal about themselves when they expose the back.  Many of my subjects were more willing to pose partially nude simply because I was shooting them from behind.  Why is this?  It seems as though human beings place a great deal of importance on the front of their physique: their face and chest specifically.  However, I found (having photographed many subjects in a variety of situations) that I was able to connect emotionally with my subject, and glean more of who they were by shooting them from behind, as opposed to doing a traditional portrait.   

As a whole, I wonder if this series and my fascination with the human back, will ever end.  I feel that I could keep shooting along these lines for a long time and not tire of the images I am able to construct.

Another series I have been exploring extensively over the past year has dealt with an under-appreciated, under-represented demographic that is dear to my heart.  I began taking portraits of adults with disabilities that I have been able to build relationships with.  I feel that these portraits, and the series as a whole are not yet complete, as this is a personal project that I do not take lightly.  I look at these images and see dear friends, and the meaning behind each photograph is still developing for me.