Cars and more cars

 

I am playing with the idea of manipulating current images I have of un-restored classic cars.  For my gallery series I have been using just straight photographs, edited only for color correction and cropping.  Here I have before and after shots.  I used Photoshop to create a sort of a cut-paper effect by selecting colors with the Magic wand tool and filling in sections on different layers. I’m not sure how I feel about the results.  I mean I think they are really interesting and definately highlight the facial features of the cars but I’m not sure how original the concept is or if it’s worth taking to the gallery level.  Maybe I should just stick to straight photography?

 

 

One year later…

It’s been a year since my father was told he had a brain tumor.  A year since we thought it had spread from somewhere else, undetected.  A year since I got the best news of my life, so far.  

Just before Thanksgiving 2007 my father had a really strange experience at work.  He found he had trouble spelling the word Lithium.  Most of us never even have to think about this word but as a Pharmacist for the Department of Mental Health it’s something he comes across daily.  And it’s spelled phonetically so… what could the problem be?  He also had trouble writing our last name and as his agitation grew concerned coworkers phoned my mother and I.  They feared he’d had a stroke and given that his first heart attack (which resulted in a quadruple bypass) happened when I was seven I was not really emotionally ready for this news.  Doctors checked him out… found nothing… we went on with our lives.  

Once the holidays were over his health became of concern again and that’s when they dropped the bombshell.  Brain scans showed a mass and by all tests it appeared to be a brain tumor that had spread from somewhere else.  Surgery was scheduled almost immediately and I think I held my breath for a week.  I wondered if I would ever see him alive again, if he would walk me down the aisle and dance with me at my wedding, cook for me again, anything.  We prayed to every God we knew of, sacreligious or not we were taking any help we could get.

The day of the surgery came and as I waited for any news from my mother I finally called for an update.  
“He’s out of surgery. He’s fine.  They didn’t find anything.”

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Time stopped.  ”What do you mean they didn’t find anything?”  That’s not at all what I expected.  When they opened his head and poked around as it turns out there was nothing there.  Some dead tissue, evidence of a stroke suffered at some unknown point in time. No tumor.  The only explanation being that the mass of tissue and broken capillaries, etc. showed up as a tumor.  Or maybe it was a miracle.  I like to think that it was.  Either way we’re very very very very very lucky to still have him.  He stills has trouble spelling certain words and typing some letters, mostly “H’s” and “N’s” for some reason.  I’ve included some images of his scars and bruising.  He looked like Frankenstein and it was hard not to grimace while I talked to him.

Masktaculous

My grandparents farm is well known for being home to large amounts of junk that make no sense (particularly in relation to rural farm life in appalachia).  My boyfriend and I first found the fencing mask several months ago and I snapped a picture of him immediately.  However, I’ve always wanted to use it in a series and with my Large Format Photography class I got the chance.  The sandblasting helmet was also discovered on the farm, rotting in an abandoned shed for who knows how long.  The goggles belong to the model’s husband who is currently serving in Iraq (and probably needs them) .  April, the model, also drew one of the masks on herself with makeup and  I only regret that we somehow knocked the camera and lost focus.  I think the lack of clothing in most shots helps to generalize the images so that they are not costume-like, and the focus remains on the masks themselves, their many uses and interpretations.

 

Today I can be anyone I want.

Ocho Foto!

 New Work by Advanced Photography Studentsat the University of South Carolina    

Date:	Thursday, March 27, 2008
Time:	6:00pm – 8:00pm
Location:	City Art Gallery
Street:	1224 Lincoln St
City/Town:	Columbia, SC

 

 City Art Gallery will host Ocho Foto: New Work by USC Photography Students March 27-April 12, 2008. The opening reception will be held Thursday, March 27 from 6:00-8:00pm at the gallery.

This exhibition is organized as part of the Advanced Photography II course requirement in the McMaster College of Art at USC. For the class each student is required to produce a series of images to be included in a group exhibition. The exhibition gives students the opportunity to showcase their work, while providing experience in planning and curating an exhibition. In addition to the completion of new work, students are responsible for securing a local venue, all curatorial decisions, and working to involve the community in the event. 

Featured artists include: Marshall Hodge, Tricia Hatfield, Anna Broadwell, Miguel de Leon, Amanda Heiney, Maggie Edmonds, Heather Thomas, and Liz Craft. The exhibition will also include the work of Mike Bryant. Mike is a photography student who was unable to continue work with his classmates after becoming ill with Hodgkins Lymphoma.

 

Iron Portraits

There is a slight chill in the air, but the afternoon sun lazily reaches out, taunting me with promises of great adventure and hidden treasure.  A maze of sleeping iron beasts stretches in every direction, and my heart races with excitement.  The smell of warm rubber and rust guides me around stacks of old tires.  Here and there is a glimmer, where the chrome still proudly clings to fenders long ago wrenched from their rightful place and thrown callously into the grass.  I stop and start many times, unsure where to begin as my excitement pulls me here and there. 

            The cars greet me like old friends.  I cannot help but wonder what they have seen, or where they have been. Each one seems to look at me with a face as plain as yours or mine, longing for the days when every innovation was exciting and full of potential.  They long to race for glory and pride, long to cruise down main-street showing off, long to be a chariot of young love.  I long to see it happen again. 

            I have a love affair with every car in my series.  It is love at first sight, though I confess to knowing little more than a name for many.  I photograph them as I would a lover or friend, concentrating on their “faces” and the “expressions” I most enjoy.  When I am with them this world fades, leaving me with my daydreams and iron portraits. 

 

Here are 6 of 8 Photos that will be part of the Ocho Foto Advanced Photography Student Show at CityArt Gallery in Columbia, SC.  The show will open Thursday, March 27 from 6-8pm and will be up through April 12.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living Memory

As I type my father is undergoing an operation to remove a metastatic brain tumor.  They tell us we could know as early as tomorrow where the primary cancer is.  That will be a huge relief since not knowing has been the scariest part of this experience.  I’m dealing with it through my art.  Hopefully I can stay focused through this project but today I decided to forgo classes since I’m freaking out pretty nicely at home.  In an effort to stay calm I’ve started looking through the photos I took of him this weekend.  No matter what happens he won’t look like this again for a long time.     



   



 

Bridge Series

One of my favorite places on my grandparents farm is a wooden bridge.  To get there you had to leave the main yard and go into the pasture (sometimes goats or horses were out here, but mostly just rabbits and deer).  The grassy path was usually cut fairly short because my grandmother has a horrible fear of snakes.  You go almost to the middle of the pasture and then turn down a fairly good hill before the land levels out right up to the creek.  It was so far from the house that it always felt kind of magical.  And the fact that there was this long exciting trek leading to a bridge with no visible path on the other side made is mysterious.  When you get down there nowadays all you hear is the wind in the trees, hounds baying in the distance, echoing off the mountains.  Most of the birdsong is hushed and there’s a pleasant tension as if the forest had been waiting anxiously for you all day.  My grandmother (who is rumored to be Fae herself) used to tell stories about fairies in the woods, and maybe there are.   2003  Spring 2007        Winter 2007      Winter 2007     Winter 2007     Winter 2007     Winter 2007     Winter 2007 

Lions and tigers and…flamingos?

I had a lovely trip to the zoo today.  We went an hour before closing (4ish) so the light was awesome.  I had a lot of fun “shooting from the hip” you could say.  I took a zillion pictures of everything I saw.  Here are my favorites.         

Something like James Dean

I’ve been really slack about even getting these photos into my digital portfolio but I finally remembered to do it.  This is from my final last semester, a series inspired by James Dean.  We had a lot of fun with these shots and there are some I can’t quite find yet!  My boyfriend is famous for hating his photo being taken but I think I changed his mind. He really started to enjoy the work… hope it doesn’t go to his head!  I’m considering a series using my best friend (the girl in my first post) and he but I haven’t really fleshed it out in my head yet.    ”A little to the left”  ”Rebel Without a Cause”  ”The bad boy, from a good family”   ”Restless”

Mema Stories Picture #2

My grandparents until this year have managed to keep up a fairly good sized vegetable garden.  They are in their mid 80’s.  A large part of my childhood was spent praying for rain, and then regretting it when it came and I had to “work” the garden.  I’m kind of sad that my children won’t get to be a part of this culture because I’m afraid it will just be dead by the time I get any.  My parents most likely won’t keep a vegetable garden when they retire and move up here and let’s face it my grandparents (contrary to popular belief) aren’t going to be around forever.  So towards the end of the summer after we’d planted, prayed for rain, dug up weeds, picked endless ears of corn, bushels of green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, ochre, salat, blueberries and whatever else they planted we had to do something with the excess.  This is excess after we  gave away to various friends and family members literally hundreds of dollars worth of produce (this is true organic produce mind you, and have you seen the price of blueberries lately? Outrageous.) My grandmother would spend about a week canning vegetables, making jams and jellies, and freezing anything else we couldn’t eat.  By this time  if I never ate another fruit or vegetable until the next summer I would have been perfectly fine.  She has a wonderful story about making jelly and jam you can read here  ”In the summers of my childhood I learned to depend on Mother Nature and her bountiful gifts”.