San Clemente High School Photography Gallery

This gallery took place in San Clemente at the Casa Romantica. It consisted of all the best photography of the High School photo class this year and also consisted of ceramics and paintings/drawings for the other art classes at the school. I was excited for this because I took two  years of this class back in High School with a different teacher and this is the first year the put together an actual gallery for the students. It was very well organized and a great location for art, on a hill looking over the ocean and the pier. My brother’s work was in the gallery and I was excited to see it. He develops his own shots and school on his own paper, and the other class is a digital photography class, so I really loved his shot because it was my favorite style. He used the chemicals to make it sepia on his black and white film. Some of my other favorites at the gallery where all of one other student. He was a painter and had a certain style about his work that I connected with. I would buy the work if it were for sale. One specific piece he did was a large 4 foot tall split 4 piece painting of four famous figures in history. Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and Franco. All painted with red lips and named “The Kiss of Death.”

Here’s the view from where the gallery took place.

blurb artists

One of my favorite blurb artists was the second runner up winner of 2008 for the photobook live contests. His name is Benjamin Lowy and did a book on Iraq. He called it Iraq Perspectives and is all shot through the  bullet proof windows of the Army Humvee in the Iraq War. He was able to catch the beauty of Iraq and not just the war. I love it because the Humvee bullet proof window frames the photo perfectly. He shot landscape that turned out amazing and also people that approached the car. He captured the poverty, tragedy, fear, and also the beauty of the land. The landscape shots really jump out in my mind but there are also shots of the people of Iraq on the other side of the window. One man has an AK47 waving at the Humvee and there a police man that obviously looks like he will kill someone. I also thought he captured the lifestyle and also poverty really well as a lady approaches the Humvee with a basket of eggs to sell. I loved it because at the same time being an artistic book it also showed the different types of people there and the city life too.

Iraq Perspectives

2 internet artist

My first artist is named Drew Speziale. He is one of my favorite artists because of his extremely detailed and crowded designs. His art is usually for bands and CD covers for examples but also make very clean tattoos. He usually works with vines and skulls and I think I admire his work so much because these are the two things that I have always liked to doodle on hw when I am bored. He went to the Savannah College of Art and Design and plays in a band called Circle Takes the Square who I have been listening to since I was about 17 years old. He likes to incorporate death and also life in his art and shows birds, clocks, angels, and skulls a lot. He sells his art in big printouts online and I plan on using his work as art on my walls in the future and would go well in my house.

My other favorite artist is named Matt Gauck. His theme is next stop – adventure and this is why I love his work. His work is so dream like that they should make a movie about it. The only way I can describe it is like James and the Giant Peach the movie. I absolutely love this style and his art revolves around these characters that he has created. It is not like any other art work and that is what makes it so unique. His characters are usually giants and also robots made by house hold items like vacuum cleaners. His artwork is always about an adventure and almost every piece of work he has basically seems like it is a shot from a giant adventure. Each design seems like it hold a giant story that I really want to know about, they consist of mystery, dreams, and adventures and that’s what makes his art have meaning. He also does tattoo design and artwork for bands. I found his work through Circle Takes the Square, just like Drew’s artwork. shilloetteadventure

Museum of Art

The Museum of Art exhibit right now is very interesting. At least mainly the paintings and framing is interesting because I am not into sculptures as much. The exhibit is right now however is European Old Masters in themes of sacred and secular and also American Art. I thought the most amazing thing right away when I walked in is thinking some of these paintings were actual photographs. I saw a couple pieces that I swore were photographs and then up close you can see the medium that the painter used to create it. Some of my favorite styles there were Asian scroll art which I have always been obsessed with and also some landscape paintings. I thought the landscapes were Europe but they were actually paintings of the back country of San Diego. They were beautiful and reminded me so much of my Grandma’s house in the back country of France. It was the same style of painting that most artists in France use also for the environments and landscape which made it even more of a connection for me. I looked mainly at the American art because they were so amazing. Painted like Monet but taking place in America. Guy Orlando Rose was my favorite artist at the exhibit because of the tones and color he uses for the landscapes. I love the paintings because they show the beauty in America and not the cities and industrial areas, which I do love in photography, but for some reason in painting it matches perfectly.

I think it works the same way for the Asian art because they never seem to paint the cities or industries. I love their work because you can tell how traditional it is. Not just paint but ink and not cities but the beautiful landscapes in Asia. I have always loved their traditional style also because of the text or literature they always put with it to collaborate. These have always gone together really well. It would never work with our language and style of painting because the textures would not match at all. With this style they use the same medium to paint the landscape that they do to write a book.

Museum of Photographic Arts

The current exhibit at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego right now is really interesting because it is mainly really old photographs and sepia style Native American culture themes. However, aside from this part of the exhibit that really caught my eye was the James Nachtwey section. It was really cool to see his photographs in person because I have only seen his work on the computer from when we learned about him in class. It was awesome to see a real print of the shot of the man that was mauled by a lion and the scars across his face. I could see so much more detail in his work that he deserves especially in the shot from 911 in New York. He was able to make it look like a nightmare with the clouds of smoke forming like an explosion. I thought at first it was photoshopped with other effects. His work is simply amazing. One of my favorite shots of the whole exhibit was his shot of the man throwing a Molotov cocktail. His work captures these acts in that split second that creates a piece of art.

It is almost unrecognizable to see most of his shots because of the disaster until you read what it is. Another artist at the exhibit was Edward Steichen  who had a pretty interesting style. He shot landscaped and toned them in a dirty sepia very nicely. It was cool because they are the real deal shots from the 1800s and not the digitally toned shots like today. I like this because I am into this style and I respect his style because it is the original. He was able to do these with no digital help or anything.

Lastly, another artists that caught my eye was  Lou Stoumen and his giant photographs of faces. It was really cool to see these because they literally are about eye level height at about 5-6 feet big shots. These portraits are very very dark with the edges basically blacked out and a very close up of the face. The man was blurry but it almost adds to the sense of uneasiness and off balance feeling it gives to you from the size of it. It definitely got me into very large shots for the future, and makes me want to try someday to print out a shot that is the same height as myself.

Indesign Project

Indesign

david carson influence

This is my work with some David Carson styles 

david carson

I only saw a little bit of Carson’s work but of the pages that he showed I felt like we have the same kind of style and I liked that about him. I think I like his work because it is so much more of a collage style piece and although it is all put together to make one piece it still has organization in an artistic way. The main think I like is the way he uses lettereing, not so much different fonts, but he uses different sizes and bold for some of the letters in the word. It makes it still easy to read it but for some reason more interesting and fun to see what they are spelling out, aside from letters in different fonts and words in different colors etc for example, his style of different sizes give more of flow.

zines

I really enjoyed the zine gallery a lot. It finally introduced me to what I have been thinking this whole time which is the origin of them. I kept saying to myself that they look so much like flyers for shows back in the 802 for hardcore bands and punk bands. I relate to this because it is all my type of music and flyers are half the fun of, which is why i think I find these zines so fun and interesting. It is great to be able to take someone else’s work and be able to manipulate it to the point that it is actually your own work now. For people like me that are not good at drawing or painting it is a great activity. I just loved it because it was exactly my kind of taste in art. I related to all the artist there in their lifestyle, music taste and in this case their style of art which is what made it a really cool interaction gallery for me. My favorite part was actually making my own page.

I think the hardest part is always the blank page which is wierd for me because it is the exact same thing with writing. I have always loved writing and it always starts with the blank page, however, once you get going on it there is no stopping, which is what makes these zine pages so much fun to do. I stuck around mainly just scraps i found on the table and eventually found a theme to stick to. My other favorite part of the exhibit was for sure the type writer. I use to play on them when I was little so it is really cool to include this medium to art and it can give a different look to it. I involved music paper as the main page to work on it because music is a huge part of my life, then I just threw on letters and heart organs and of course skulls to bring it all together. It was a great experience and I look forward to further workshops on zines in the future.