It’s been quite the year.
Denver, New York, the Jersey Shore, Albuquerque, Portland, London, San Francisco, and Monterey so far, with Philly and Chicago up next.
Just writing that, no wonder I’m so tired.
Antidote starts up again tomorrow, then my daughter turns 7 a few days later, and I hang an art show the next week.
It’s easy to give in to negative thoughts, when the exhaustion sets in, I admit.
And after being in Peak-Fitness-Shape back in June and early July, now I’ve got so many niggles and out-of-whack muscles, I feel like I just went two rounds with Mike Tyson.
(Of course in reality I’d barely last 3 seconds…)
I’ve been whining and moaning, feeling sorry for myself because I’m wiped out. I’m even writing it here, two weeks in a row.
But…
Yes, there’s a but…
Just yesterday, separately, my wife and I came to the same conclusion. The negative thoughts follow exhaustion, true, and we even have a term for it: tired brain.
You can battle it, with exercise and sleep and rest, but at least one of those is always hard to come by for us, this time of year.
You can also fight it with a mental re-frame, which is what Jessie and I realized yesterday.
My family is healthy, our retreat is thriving, I’m super-lucky to have the chance to show my work on the walls of the Harwood Museum of Art, and in a new book.
And here I am complaining.
So right now, I’m sitting on the couch, typing on a computer, and I’ve got a smile on my face.
I’m doing it on purpose, sure, but it works. Smiling.
It’s easy, in 2019, the era of Trump and Climate Change, to succumb to a near-permanent hysteria. Social media, traditional media, and even hanging around the wrong people can lead us to believe the end of the world is imminent.
If we don’t fix Climate Change in the next 6 years, WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE.
DIE, DID YOU HEAR ME?
DIE!!!!!
That’s the level of discourse these days.
No wonder everyone is so fucking stressed all the time.
(Me included.)
One of my favorite things about doing Antidote, and attending all the festivals I do, is that when creative people get together in one place, ideas happen.
Every time.
You can’t predict what will come of it, but you’re guaranteed something will.
2019 is a tricky time, so if you have any additional opportunity to get out there and hang out with your favorite people, or meet new ones, get it done.
I know I had fun in Portland, and even though the early spring seems a long time ago, I’ve got a good memory, and I take notes too.
So why don’t we check out some more of The Best Work I saw at the Photolucida festival in Portland earlier this year.
Jennifer Bucheit, from Wisconsin, showed me photographs that were printed on packaging, which feels of the moment.
She recycles the value of worthless things by incorporating them into art.
I think it’s important that art pieces like these have a strong connection between the object and the image, and I could maybe quibble here or there, but really, this is a cool project.
These jpegs show front and back, obviously, but IRL you can’t see them simultaneously. It makes the digital experience inherently different from the real.
Sunjoo Lee, from Seoul, Korea, had some of my favorite work. (If I’m allowed to say such things.) It’s just so up my alley.
Zen. Spare. Beautiful. Haunting. Quiet. Austere. (But not in a bad way.)
It feels silly to stay too much about these, though I should clarify that the subtle nature makes the prints a different thing than the digital experience.
Do I sense a trend?
Yes I do.
Jody Ake, whom I hadn’t seen at a portfolio review since 2009, was at the festival showing work, as he lives in the area, and had a new project.
I knew Jody back then, when he was making wet plate portraits of people, and there wasn’t much work like that then. Now, it’s all over the place, so perhaps he was ahead of his time.
(Maybe he still is, as Jody owns a marijuana edible company.)
His new work features analog, old school images made of computer-generated landscapes in video games. These scenes, all ones and zeroes, were made for and of color, so stripping that back makes them eerie indeed.
Quinn Russell Brown, based in Seattle, had some pictures made of digital equipment from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s personal collection, which he considers a visual obituary to the deceased mogul. (I swear, I didn’t plan this theme today. It just happened.)
The images were made at Paul Allen’s personal museum, and are super-cool. Pictorially, they’re very different than everything else today, even if they fit with the others, thematically.
The color and design elements are fantastic. Great stuff.
Lori Pond and I had a difficult conversation, at first, because I really didn’t like some of what she she showed me. I was nice about it, of course, but art is subjective, and it was not to my taste.
But we kept calm, and she had many other things to show me, including this really cool group of pictures, which marries text and imagery so well.
Like Jennifer’s work, it’s of the moment, with museums around the world having to reckon with the Colonialist past that brought in all their best loot.
Sage Brown, who’s based in Portland, had pictures made locally that reminded him of the vibe in his home state of Virginia. (He grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains.)
We discussed that there is something of a trope, with pictures like this, especially in Portland, with the whole Portland-street-dude phenomenon.
That said, I like these pictures a lot.
They feel lived in, real, and authentic, and lacking in pretension in any way. They’re well constructed, and use the color palette to communicate the sadness.
We’ll finish with Soraya Zaman, whose Daylight book, “American Boys,” I saw at Blue Sky Gallery during the publisher’s night.
People lined up outside to get in, by the way, and I saw a ton of books being sold. (Good things happen when people get together.)
As to the images, I remember telling Soraya that they were way too edgy for the NYT Lens blog. (It was still going at the time.)
She asked me why and I said, “That’s their taste, not mine. I think they’re badass, and I’d publish them in a heartbeat on A Photo Editor.”
So here we are.
Enjoy.
