First Mentor Meeting

Karl Baden agreed to be my new mentor, and even managed to have a meeting with me this week. He made some astute observations that should help direct my work for the rest of the semester. He thought my current body of work is interesting, but he had two main concerns. The first concern was with how many of these type of images could I really do, assumedly before it becomes redundant. The second concern was the relationship this work has to Jerry Uelsmann and the risk of being clique. Both of these issues are things I have been somewhat aware of, but wasn't sure how to proceed.

Addressing these two points can help drive my work forward. I have been working with similar imagery from last semester, and while I enjoy the process, I have been wondering if these images brought anything new in terms of content or presentation. Karl suggested giving the images more complexity, such as through the presence multiple perspectives. A similar idea came up during the residency, but during this meeting, it was addressed much more specifically. Right now, these images all look in a very central direction. This has been mostly intentional on my part. I wanted the images to feel like places the viewer could actually enter, and this kind of perspective works well for that. It also is the way I intuitively photograph and simplifies the process of cohesively blending images. I see the value of deviating from this, however. I have been considering ways make the images more interesting and this seems like a logical place to start.

Below are two of my newest images I brought to our meeting, along with other images I've posted to this blog. The iamge on the right has been reworked from last semester to give in more depth and perspective. I have begun, for the moment, reconsidering images that I took in the past, rather than trying to find new things to photograph. The current snowy landscape can only offer so much and looking at my photo archive with new eyes was refreshing.

             

I showed Karl the study I did with the mirrors and reflected image and he brought up some artists who have worked with mirror installation successfully. Karl also pointed out how water seems to be important to my images. I often include water as a symbol for things being in a state of change, and to some extent, as something that erodes and causes change. I'm interested in emphasizing the temporal in my work. In order to avoid some of the borderline clique images, Karl suggested using actual water verses just photographic elements. This seems like a very intuitive direction and once he suggested it, I wondered why it hadn't occurred to me sooner. He recommended doing some tests with paper in water and I think this could yield some interesting results. The physical erosion of the image holds some potential. We looked at some work that Charles Ray did with oil (a Minimalist style cube filled with oil, and a jet of oil that looked like a thin line in the center of the gallery) as well as James Turrell, who uses light as a material, giving it a substance-like quality.

I seem to be moving towards the realm of installation, like a moth to a light. This direction surprises me but I also find it exciting. There is so much possibility. It was so valuable to have an outside look at my work. It can be hard to get the necessary clarity on my own. Sometimes I feel like I can't see the forest through the trees. This meeting was timely and refreshing.