Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Alessandro Bavari





BIOGRAPHY

Alessandro Bavari was born in Latina, a coastal town south of Rome, Italy, on april 1963.

Grown up in an italo-french family, he was early attracted by artistic matters and decided to attend art college, where he began making photomontages at the age of 15.

Then, he studied scenography, photography, history of art and various other topics at the Academy of Fine Arts, in Rome, where he developped strong grounding in the techniques of oil, watercolours and engraving, while experimenting at the same time methods mixing tar, glue, industrial paint and exploring photographic printing techniques.

During these years, he took the habit of making numerous photographs everywhere he goes : human and animal matters, objects and architecture, pictures and landscapes, fossils and materials, which join his mental museum, also strongly influenced by indo-european cultural myths and allegories as well as 14th and 15th century artists.

Since 1993, he adds digital manipulation to his art, developping a personal artistic language using industrial and organic products from nature before incorporating photographic process, then computer digitalization, which leads to "a kind of contamination among the arts dissolving the boundaries which distinguish them".

Alessandro Bavari lives and works in Italy.


Youtube interview


Gallery


artist website


Monday, September 29, 2008

Incomplete

Paul Thulin has read your blog up to this point/entry.


Your blog is currently incomplete.


Sunday Artist Highlight

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Data Visualization


"Data presentation can be beautiful, elegant and descriptive. There is a variety of conventional ways to visualize data - tables, histograms, pie charts and bar graphs are being used every day, in every project and on every possible occasion. However, to convey a message to your readers effectively, sometimes you need more than just a simple pie chart of your results. In fact, there are much better, profound, creative and absolutely fascinating ways to visualize data. Many of them might become ubiquitous in the next few years."

SmashingMagazine.com Data Visualization: Modern Approaches 8/2/2007


I have been searching for a way of visualizing graphical data in my work. Visualizing historical graphical data in a more aesthetically pleasing manor is an area of art that is kist now being breached. Beyond Graphs and charts. Visually pleasing presentations of any given data can hold the viewers attention longer. It can be easily interpreted or loosely based, but should uphold the data

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Trey Ratcliff












"Welcome to my personal site. I have made this site to explore a bit of creative photography and writing, and I know full well that people that Google me will end up here. Others end up from my official photography portfolio at www.treyratcliff.com.

On this site, I lay about 80% of my life out there for everyone to see - friends and business associates, current and future. Most of my days and nights are spent working with the fine team at John Galt Games, but I do find time to have a bit of a creative outlet here on my blog, taking pictures and doing a bit of writing. I find it keeps me balanced.

Briefly… a photography-centric bio

I’m best well known for, well, I suppose, this site, StuckInCustoms.com, where I gets around 300,000 unique visits per month including one from my mom. In addition to this, Flickr, and other online communities, my work has been seen in the Smithsonian castle in DC, is represented by Getty, has been featured on the BBC, and has had numerous showings around the world.

I am known generally for my interpretation of HDR photography, for which I have a tutorial there on the right. I grew up blind in one eye and this might have changed the way I views the world. I don’t know. It’s hard to be objective about the way one’s brain was wired. My background is in computer science and math, so I bring an algorithm-like process to capturing the scene in such a way that it evokes memories in a palpable manner. "


Interview:
http://www.fotohacker.com/2008/01/30/interview-with-hdr-photographer-trey-ratcliff/

Getty Images is his gallery.


Artists Website: http://stuckincustoms.com/

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Free Market


“For years now, we have had to listen to bankers attacking Washington for imposing regulations that inhibit the free markets from making even more money.” ~ Philip Broughton

Free-market capitalism lies shredded ... while America's confidence is badly shaken

Sept 18th 2008 Philip Delves Broughton

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1057395/Free-market-capitalism-lies-shredded--Americas-confidence-badly-shaken.html

This relates to a subject that intrigues me, the so called Free Market. In a time when banks are being bailed out with huge government interventions and businesses that should be left to fail if they cannot develop a profitable business plan are propped up by laws that prevent their failure entirely. How can the market want it both ways? A free market has proven itself time and time again. If the market was left to it’s own devises, there would be no need for a bailout. Banks would fail, entrepaneurs would see an opportunity and start a better bank. One built on a more solid foundation instead of an assumed invulnerability. Some would succeed, others would fail. That is how improvements are made and what this country was built on.

Dennis Olivier






My first encounter with photography took place when my parents performed some strange static dances with an object in front of their face. Later they would close themselves up in a special room under the house for long periods of time, and no one was allowed in. They diligently made sure that they were left to their own devices while inside. One day I was given permission to enter the room and allowed to stay, but on the condition that I didn't move or went out. I remember there was a unique chemical perfume and a red light.

I was bewildered: my parents appeared flashing a white light on a piece of paper using a strange apparatus. Then they dipped it into a clear liquid and Behold! I couldn't believe it, A miracle! They were wizards who created pictures.

In the following years I didn't really follow his experiments, I was too young to manipulate cameras and I prefered to draw. Photography, Architecture and Art was always present around us and I still remember the black and white exhibitions that we visited.

When I was a teenager, I continued to draw and started to paint a little. I even took part in some local exhibitions. At the age of 17 I began to take some photographs, I was especially fascinated by mineralogical micro mounts. I started studying biochemistry, but after 3 years I changed to Poitiers school of fine-arts, and took an interest in computer graphics and generated imagery.

While I was there I meet Alain Fleig who introduced me to art photography. I also felt a need to practise photography, and with a friend we spent a lot of time learning how to develop films and photographs. We did sessions with models, scenery, and discovered France.

The second year I had my first personal exhibition in a gallery, which was a great experience, then a training placement with Philippe Salaün, who was at this time Robert Doisneau's developer. Following this I did some jobs for organizations, shows and commissioned works. I then started in December 1995 working with computer graphics and made use of the Internet.

I worked in artistic direction for several years, then digital cameras came along and I found a way to work quickly and experiment without using too many resources such as film, chemicals, photo sensitive paper and of course the wonderful resource of water.

Now I meet and exchange information with many photographers after the freedom Digital SLRs have given me to have exactly what I want with the different lenses and power features. I continue to produce some material and I'm involved and maintain collaborative projects such as Art Limited or M42

Interviews : http://www.denisolivier.com/interview.php

Cannot find representing Gallery

Website: http://www.denisolivier.com/


Frustration


“This, in simplest terms, is the frustration. Somehow, as a tourist, I can never seem to produce the same kind of pictures that are on display in galleries, shops, or as post cards. Sure, I usually come home with something that I can be proud of, but I never seem to achieve what I expected to be able to do.” ~ Louie Powell


The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict. ~ Elizabeth Drew


Art is a very joyous obsession that has one large drawback – the frustration that is involved with the middle of the process, when things can go either way. ~ Travis Bowles


A point of Frustration- trying to produce outstanding, artistic photos while on vacation

Louie Powell January, 1993

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1306/is_n1_v59/ai_13462317/pg_2?tag=artBody;col1



This topic relates to my overall work because I am obviously frustrated that I seem to be exhausted conceptually on the art front after 5 or so years of art school. I feel frustrated when I pick up the camera, let alone start editing what I shoot. The more obvious topic of the article describes the frustration from taking photo’s on my recent vacation.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Candice Breitz

I attended the Candice Breitz artist lecture. I thought her work was conceptually stunning while at the same time having more to do with other peoples views on subject than her own. Although she was obviously observing and making statements on modern pop culture, the subjects themselves each seemed to tell their own individual story.

I believe the works besides her Legend, Queen, King, and Working Class Hero was a better representation of just her views on modern society. The isolation of personal pronouns in the Four Duets seemed to bring out the individual artists own feelings on the emphasis they placed on either the You or the I values. I did not see any of them place the same emphasize on both. They either seemed to have more passion about themselves or about others. Atleast thats what I saw, and according to Breitz it's more about what the viewer see's in her work than what she originally conceptualized.

Monday, September 15, 2008

andrzej dragan





Biography available on his website: http://andrzejdragan.com/

Good description of work:

Andrzej Dragan's portraits terrify on one hand and addict on the other. One has a strong need to come back and penetrate inhumanly realistic elements of the photographs going deeper and deeper. Power and clarity of the detail, and crystal purity of the color, sober and gloomy light are the elements of Dutch paintings. This is probably the source of the impact of Andrzej's photographs. Portraying so well-known characters as David Lynch, Mads Mikkelsen or Jerzy Urban in the manner of old, Rembrandt style surprises the viewer used to contemporary photography which is so close to spontaneous expression, escaping from reality through exaggerated effects such as movement, blurring the image or taking the colors down to unnatural scale. Dragan's works remain inside one's mind for a long time and most of all - they stand out among thousands of others images surrounding us.

~Tomek Sikora

Couldn't find a website for the Lipinski Gallery in Warsaw however that is the last gallery to host him.

Economy

Amid continued upheaval among America's biggest financial firms, a former head of the U.S. Federal Reserve says even more institutions could face insolvency, and that the United States appears unlikely to avoid an economic recession.”

Former US Fed Chief Somber on Economic Prospects

VOA News author

http://voanews.com/english/2008-09-14-voa17.cfm



This article is just a sampling of the economy today, however I believe the average consumer still cannot grasp what the situation really is or how it might affect them. My life is centered around the market and following the U.S. economy in relation to other economies. I find it fascinating to look at the economic figures and then drive down the street next to a hummer passing billboards and new construction projects. I took a series of photographs exploring images people pass every day and took it in contrast to the news in the article above.




Back

I'm back from Jamaica as of 9/14/08 and working on making up missed entries.

My time out was from 9/4/08- 9/13/08.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Incomplete

Paul Thulin has read your blog up to this point/entry. Your blog is currently not up to date and work has been recorded as incomplete.