Spiders

Kim Manfredi

In Professional Practices class this week, we went to MICA grad student Kim Manfredi's studio.  Kim's a painter as well as a co-owner of Charm City Yoga.  Her recent abstract paintings are wonderful and the set above, For Franz West, were my favorite.  Overall, the visit was awesome.  She has some awesome advice and hearing her talk about her work was great too.  Go check out her stuff and go take some yoga classes with her :)  I know I'm planning to.

Fish

Found this image the other day while I was surfing the net and fell in love with it.  It's by Rebecca Handler.  Go here to see it larger and to get more info on Rebecca and her work.

PP4VA Week 2

One year goals:

• have a complete, up-to-date working website that includes a resume
• complete an photography internship anywhere, as long as its useful and not busy work
• learn to shoot large format
• graduate MICA and know what I'm doing afterwards as far as where am I living, my job, etc.

Five year goals:

• own a gallery space with a friend that we curate
• have my own darkroom completely set up
• be in multiple group shows & be branching out from whatever town I'm located in
• be successfully working so that I'm paying off school debt yet still living comfortably

Career goals:

• shows overseas, whether group or solo
• have a major solo show
• publish a book
• debt free
• lots and lots of traveling
• be happy

The first artist I'd like to work with in graduate school is Stephen Althouse. He's a graduate photography professor at Barry University- School of Arts and Sciences located in Miami, Fl. He received his Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University. His undergraduate study was at Tyler School of Art, Rollins College, Florida, and the University of Miami where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture. He's been awarded the position as artist-in-residence at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Liège, Belgium, through a Fulbright Research Fellowship. In addition to being widely exhibited, his artwork has been extensively collected by major museums and private collectors throughout North America, South America, and Europe.

His prints are gorgeous; the details that he achieves are phenomenal. Not only that, but I love his subject matter. He was raised in rural Pennsylvania, as was I, and his work has strong ties to that which is something that draws me to his stuff even more. His website said he shoots the images with large format film and then scans the negatives and finalizes the images on the computer. This process is something that I want to learn as well, so learning it from someone that has mastered it the way he has would be an honor.

The other artist I'd like to work with is Will Mosgrove, the Graduate Director of Photography at Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He's not only a fine art photography, but he's had great success as a commercial artist, which is what made me notice him. I do prefer his personal work over his portfolio of commercial work, however I appreciate how he still keeps his style in the commercial work.

Baby Octopus

When I got to work tonight, this little guy was the background on the computer desktop & it made me super happy!!  lol I just want this made out of glass and hanging on a chain from my neck :P

Michael Itkoff

So Justin showed me this guy Michael Itkoff yesterday and I immediately fell in love with his Wrecked series.  It's sortof like my race car series except mine's about actual dirt track racing and this is a derby-type situation.  I just decided that I'm going to continue my series for my Junior Seminar class, so expect to see a lot more of stuff like this.  

Professional Practices of the Visual Artist

Sooo I'm taking this awesome class this semester called Professional Practices for the Visual Artist.  There's a couple different sections of it, but mine is taught by Cara Ober and she is awesome.  Every week, our homework is to post on our class blog.  Our first blog was about what success means to us and to also write about a person who attended MICA and we would now consider a successful artist.  So, heres the post I wrote for the class.  Lemme know what you think :)  haha, and keep in mind that I wrote this at 5am at the end of a grave shift, so go easy on me :P

After brainstorming for a while about what success means to me, a question came to mind. Success to the majority of the world exists as a noun, a thing to be achieved. But what if it's not an actual, feasible thing but just a state of mind? I feel like almost all of my peers would agree with me on this. Almost everyone talked about how success is different for every person, how it exists based off of what the individual wanted to accomplish in the first place. I agree with this whole-heartedly. You could have all the money and recognition in the world from your work as an artist, but at the end of the day if you're not happy with yourself or your work, you're not going to recognize yourself as a success. And whose to say then that you still are? In the end, it all comes down to happiness. Without an individual's happiness, there is no success. Most times, yes, this happiness is achieved by the fact that the artist's work is recognized and respected and that the artist is making money from it, but it's not that way for everyone. Personally, I will feel successful when I have reached that point where my work is recognized and I'm making money to survive and continue my work from the work I've already done. However, I completely understand and support those who don't find happiness this way.

The artist I chose to talk about is a Jim Judeikis, a tattoo artist based out of Saints & Sinners Tattoo & Piercing in Fells Point, Baltimore, Maryland. Judeikis attended Maryland Institute College of Art and then apprenticed and worked for 7.5 years at Main St. Tattoos in Harford County, Maryland. While Judeikis is a tattoo artist and not a fine artist, I feel he still deserves the respect and acknowledgment that a fine artist that attended MICA receives. Just because his work exists on the body and is widely popular as a form of self-decoration doesn't take away the fact that it's still a piece of art. And I also thought, as I researched his work, that even though most of his stuff is reproductions of work already done, that shouldn't take away from his credibility either. Because, if it did, then such artists as Sherrie Levine probably shouldn't receive the credit that they do. I know that this is an already touchy subject in the art world, but it was something that I wanted to bring up and hopefully get feedback from the rest of the class on.

As well as being a tattoo and piercing shop, Saints & Sinners is also a contemporary art gallery, which Judeikis is the curator for. I think Judeikis would share my definition of success because I believe he defines himself as an artist even if not by the tradition sense. And therefore because it's not traditional, he does it because it's what makes him happy. He could've been a professional painter (you can find pictures of his original paintings on their myspace), but he chose to be a tattoo artist.

Links:

Saints & Sinners

Saints & Sinners' Myspace

Place D'Armes

This is the hotel my aunt and I will be staying in when we get to New Orleans.  Isn't it adorable? It's in the French Quarter.  :D  I love it!  It just makes me that much more excited to get there!!

N'Awlins

My *fabulous* aunt just called to let me know that for my 21st birthday in June, she's taking me to New Orleans!!  So, in celebration, I figured I'd upload this super-generic picture of the place.  :D  I'm sooo excited!!!

Twitter

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