I Enjoy Being a Girl

Click to see it bigger (and read more easily). I'm experimenting with this!

The Garden for Wayward Girls

The show went really well! Sorry it's taken me so long to post. Micheline has uploaded a montage of clips from the approximately 25 minute piece onto her website, available here.

I took close-up shots of all of the "Pandora's boxes" I created (used as a metaphor for each dancer's personal discovery and growth), and I will try to post those, too. I am in the midst of a move to Chicago and also bought a new computer! So, things are still a little disorganized.

VCU Summer Studio Program Final Exhibition

The Summer Studio Program which I have been a part of the past two months is having it's final exhibition at the Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Fine Arts building. The show opened Saturday the 24th, and will stay up until Tuesday the 27th. I am exhibiting a new video work, and will post it here soon!

Show photos

Here is the completed Tags piece- with me standing in it for staffage. I wanted the tags, filled with faces, to come around the viewer and feel like a hug or at least give the impression of a densely populated space.

Detail of some of the paintings. I started this project in January of this year and painted nearly 500 tags with gouache. Each tag only had one person painted on each one.This piece was on the wall perpendicular to the tags. I made 8 'dioramas' out of paper and hung them on strings. Poking through the outside of the box were metal pins. Most were folded down, but others stuck straight out, creating a somewhat uninviting exterior.
Each of the pins were actually part of a 'pin ticket' (a tiny 11/2" by 2" card) that I had done drawings on and then pushed through to the outside of the box.

Most of the pin tickets (which say "Sale Price" at the top) also had tiny pen drawings on them- many of people, either singular or together, but some of feet, bananas, pets, bikes, and other everyday objects. At the back of each box was a mirror, so when the viewer looks inside the box they see a reflection of the interior space, making it look twice as big. They also see their own eye reflected in the mirror, making the viewer become a part of the work.

The third piece I included in the show were the clay faces that I have been working on since October 2009. Inspired by Daumier caricature busts, I made 40 faces out of air-drying clay.

A close up and a side view. This winter I started making some of the faces smaller, or 'submerged', so they didn't have ears showing, or only a nose and some eyes. I was interested in making the faces look like they were emerging from water, but despite many, many tries, I was unable to make that happen for the show. In the end, I'm glad I just showed them how they were without trying to add any other materials.

Each face was unique. Some of them were silly, like the one above, but most had average expressions of content, happiness or confusion.

Theora writes about Public Art

During the Fall semester and the month of January, I've been writing essays for my Chinese class and East Asian Studies capstone project. The essays are in Chinese (of course) and are about contemporary Public Art in the US and China. I am currently posting these essays on a Chinese blogging site; I am hoping that some Chinese people might find it and learn a little about art they might not otherwise have access to. I have toyed with the idea of posting these essays here, too, but there are very few people who read this blog, and even fewer that can read Chinese. If you are interested in taking a look at the blog, click here.

Theora Fits In (part III)

At the Laundromat today! Which one should I print?

Garfield Park Conservatory

Went to the Garfield Conservatory today- a free nature park with greenhouses as well as outdoor gardens. I know lots of people won't look at photos of plants, myself included, but I thought the lighting on these few turned out quite nicely. I'm using a Nikon D50 this week, on loan from my photographer uncle! Thanks Dan!

Theora Fits In part II

Here are some un-edited (i.e., not color or contrast corrected) images from my last photo shoot on this project. I have had a crit in Pipo's class and am planning to continue with this project. I have a lot more ideas and am hoping to shoot in Chicago, where I'm spending my fall break.

Frames

This was the final result of my second sculpture project this semester- I was very inerested in old, ornate picture frames (http://theorangefedora.blogspot.com/search/label/frames) that you see in museums. The frames are so intricate and were all handcarved, yet the maker is never given credit. I left my frames empty to draw attention to the handiwork that goes into this craft, and also to question why, in our society, whatever is put in a frame is instantly elevated to the status of 'art'. Made from plaster using the blanket-mold process, the multiplicity and apparent mass-production (hah!) of my frames is also in contradiction to the uniqueness of the original handcarved pieces.

This project was an unbelievable amount of work- after creating a model of each piece from clay and making a rubber mold, each section of the frames had to be cast, baked, sanded, shellac-ed, painted brown, painted gold and then rubbed over with shoe polish for the aged look.

Yours truly (for staffage).

Fourth Project: Luck

(these scans are really horrible, sorry- it was my first time scanning negs.)

(project statement)
For this final piece I combined a process I have been working on in my sculpture class (2-part molds) with a photographic narrative. The little shapes I photographed are cast from glycerin and are duplicates of this incredible stone I found on the beach in Mexico when I was twelve. I held on to this stone, as I have held on to many other small, visually interesting or meaningful objects, because I thought maybe they were lucky. I am not superstitious nor do I rely on these objects to bring me good fortune, but I have always enjoyed the imaginative nature of luck. In this work the stones serve as a visual symbol for good and bad happenings. The stones “traveled” to these different locations and were documented there, just as my own thoughts have traveled to or lingered in these same locations. The stones can denote not only the things we discover about ourselves, or what we leave behind, but also the aspects of ourselves and events in our lives that we cannot see. This idea is just beginning to take shape and in the future I plan to work more with these stones as well as the idea of luck in general.

Third Project: Persona

(apologies for the dust. I can't make myself be a perfectionist about dust on negatives. I think it must be a form of rebellion for me.)(project statement)
I created an installation in my room that suggested an environment. I asked two friends who are dancers and have known each other for a long time to be my models. I dressed them up in clothing that I thought fit well with the installation and then asked them to pretend that they lived in this space: to create the persona that they thought would inhabit this environment. I didn't give them much direction and just worked with the poses they created, occasionally giving them suggestions about where to look or what emotion they might be feeling. They worked really well together and gave me a great deal of material to chose from when printing my photos, allowing me to hone in on the exact look I wanted to create. I hung the photos with some of the original installation that I created for the photo shoot.

(I was frustrated with this project largely because of how dark the negatives turned out- I was working without a lightmeter- a very stupid idea. )

Second Project: Emulation

Escape "She didn't want to risk it, but she knew she had to go back."

A Strange Day in October "It had been ten minutes."

Antique Dealings "The next morning it happened again."

Emulation of Chris Van Allsburg’s The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.
(project statement)

For this project I tried to recreate the essence of one of my favorite childhood books. Chris Van Allsberg is a Caldecott-winning illustrator and has done several important works such as Jumanji and The Polar Express. Although The Mysteries of Harris Burdick is less well known, it is my favorite. The premise of the book is that each of the illustrations were given to Peter Wenders by a mysterious man named Harris Burdick who promised to bring the accompanying stories later. Burdick never returned and so the only clue to the content of the stories is the single illustration, its caption, and the story’s title.

My desire while emulating this work was to create a similar sense of mystery, intrigue and suspense that is felt when you read the book. The reader immediately imagines the rest of the stories without even trying. I wanted to reference his work but not duplicate any scenes exactly. Each drawing is a bit of magical realism which is quite difficult to create in photography. Instead of using Photoshop, I hoped to use lighting to add surrealism to scenes, but exposing the film correctly to this light was a challenge. I was very inspired by this book as a child and I think it encouraged a strong interest in narrative art-making. Creating these ambiguous scenarios and then portraying myself as the subject (for two of the three) was very enjoyable and fulfilling for my imaginative six-year-old self.

-->If you are not familiar with The Mysteries of Harris Burdick or the illustrator Chris VanAllsburg, please look at: http://www.amazon.com/Mysteries-Harris-Burdick-Chris-Allsburg/dp/0395353939 (you can see a few images from the book on the amazon page)
http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/harrisburdick/ (a website where people have submitted their own stories to accompany the illustrations found in the book)

First Project: Mapping

Mapping Project Statement
This project for me was not only about the subject of mapping, but also learning to express my ideas through the visual language of photography. My interpretation of mapping dealt with texture, scale and form. For me, this project was not so much about recording a certain place or even a feeling, but it was about creating an abstracted map of the surfaces of trees and logs.
I was riding my bike and came across a pile of cut logs and branches along the side of the road. I thought this was interesting because by photographing several of these logs together I was mapping several trees at the same time: the convergence of wood from different locations which was now creating an entirely different landscape from their original form. While I was photographing, it quickly became clear to me that I was more interested in the close-up texture and detail of the logs than I was photographing the huge pile. I could have a lot more control over what I was photographing without moving anything in order to create a better ‘scene’. Although I am not fascinated by landscape photography, I am interested in close-up shots which become abstracted and possibly alienated from the original context. I have continued to photograph more trees (not just the ones in the pile) over the past few weeks and continue to be interested in mapping texture and detail.