sharon arnold | dimensions variable

February Art Events - Bad Words and BrüTübe!

Some of you might be on the email list but in case I've missed you, I have a couple of quick show announcements for February:

First up is this coming Thursday, 11 February at the Twilight Collective in West Seattle - BAD WORDS, a group show curated by Chris Crites.

When: Thursday, February 11 from 6-9pm (through March 8, 2010)
Where: Twilight Artist Collective, West Seattle Junction, 4306 SW Alaska St. Seattle, WA 98116
www.twilightart.net

An excerpt from the press release:

What makes a word bad? After all, they're just words. It is the human imagination that generates a context in which certain words are frowned upon in common usage...This show is intended to be an examination of words that could be construed as "bad". I asked several artists to play with this concept of what makes BAD WORDS.

Can't make it to the opening? No worries - while I'd love to see you there Thursday night, the show will be up all month until 8 March!

*WARNING: This show contains language that could be considered offensive and is intended for mature audiences.

Next up is next Friday, 19 February at the Kirkland Art Center - BrüTübe: All's Fair in Love and War!

When: Friday February 19th, 7:30pm
Where: Kirkland Art Center, 620 Market Street Kirkland, WA 98033.
www.kirklandartscenter.org

BrüTübe is a one-night-only event where six artist/curators present fifteen minute presentations of selected You Tube videos. Don't forget to bring a handful of $1 bills for RedHooks (for those over 21), and there will be a raffle! Snacks are free.

Hope to see you there! :)

Sharon Arnold, Ambition [elevation:∞] (detail) 2009 ink, Rives Heavyweight

Daniel Carrillo Documents a Moment in Seattle Art History

A couple of weeks ago I accompanied Emily Pothast for her sitting with Daniel Carrillo at his Georgetown studio. Emily's partner David Golightly and I joked around, assisted Dan, watched, and otherwise occupied ourselves while the more technical aspects of the day went on. Truthfully, it was my second time down for a shoot - I'd had my own set of shots done a few weeks prior and this time was as fascinating and informative experience as the first.

Daniel's project started out as an exploratory exercise in a technique he thought was really cool, but now it's turning into a truly concrete documentation of Seattle art history. I'm hopelessly in love with this idea, and Carrillo's recording is an intimate, quiet, slightly reverent, certainly nurturing and tender capture. For the nervous, his easy demeanor and ability to coax the hyper into relaxing for the camera is a soothing balm. For the confident, his adept ability to keenly direct one's eyes and flatter with lights only makes the beautiful shine even brighter.

There's another, larger reason I'm into this project. If you've been reading a while, you know I'm a supporter of New York artist Matt Held's Facebook Portrait project, now in it's second phase. I wrote a bit about how portraiture is gaining new significance in the age of social networking, and how documentation has changed in regards to who's posing and who's holding. I'm seeing something of a loose kinship between Held and Carrillo, but through almost opposite means. Matt captures moments of people's self-documentation by painting either a flash-lit arm's length shot or candid paparazzi-style party photo - one which might have also been synthetically enhanced through Photoshop. Daniel is reintegrating the unhurried process of forcing a subject to sit still while the lens unflinchingly records every line and pore of their visage - completely un-enhanced by Photoshop. The common ground comes through how they both are utilising their networks through social media and both are changing the way we look at portraiture, whether it's through the exaggerated mirror of a meta-lens or bringing it right back to the beholder and beholden.

One thing Daniel mentioned during our shoot sticks with me as I look through all these portraits. He talked about how developing digital images is so different than more antiquated forms of photography. It's not that you don't still set up, plan ahead, and choose your shot carefully for digital work; it's that the slow technique of this process forces you to be even more deliberate and particular before you open the aperture. Every plate counts because wet plate collodion ambrotype isn't just measured in aesthetic value, but in time as well. Susanna Bluhm adresses this in her post about this series (she's wondering if it's different and I believe it might be):

"Generally, we relentless, digital-age, everyday photographers do a lot of self-editing. Facebook is flooded with head shots taken exactly one arm’s length away. Moving through the world with our cameras, we bask in the freedom to shoot hundreds of photos, trigger happy and swept up in the moment. So, with Daniel’s portraits, I’m struck by the way these subjects had no control over their resulting pictures. Their images were completely in the hands of the photographer, and in his ability to manipulate a complicated process. What results is an intricate vulnerability; an intimacy that you wouldn’t expect from a posed portrait shot over many seconds."

Above all else, I love how the process of wet plate collodion brings out the fierceness in everyone. Simply by virtue of the lens objectively gazing at us [gazing somewhere else] neutral and breathing, we are ourselves. Reflecting a metaphor of the lives we've lived, in these photos, time reveals our traits and the truth of who we are and how others see us is inescapably beautiful.

I've posted a Flickr set of images from Emily's shoot. Amanda Manitach and Emily Pothast have written a bit about their experience, Jen Graves included his work in today's piece on Seattle's New Guard dinner series, and Regina Hackett wrote a blurb in December. You'll be able to see a few of Daniel's portraits up this month at Some Space, but as there isn't an opening tonight you'll have to catch them another time when the shop is open (closed after 6 tonight for First Thursday). Upcoming later in February you will be able to catch this series at Gage Academy in the Entry Gallery:

Prints and Ambrotypes by Daniel Carrillo

February 26 - March 22

Artists’ Reception: Friday February 26, 6:00-8:00pm

Daniel's self portrait of himself, one of the first in the series

my view of the view of her viewing

Daniel's candid shot of me yakkin'

your turn - an open seat and a ton of potential

La Salamandra

On mythos, trials by fire, and emerging unscathed (artists, take hope):

Cuando en incendios, que sediento bebo; mi corazón habita, y no es quemado

(For in the flames I so thirstily drink; my heart lives and is not burned)

Gratuitious Link Lists Are For Fun!

Sometimes I freeze up because I want to cover a topic so thoroughly with obsessive research and detail that I end up hanging it up. Honestly, sometimes just navel gazing or talking about what I'm not talking about will/often does suffice. (yes I'm a self referential member of the human race)

But I like having fun too, so I'm going to try something new and briefly cover several superawesome things I've recently seen on my Google blogreader. I'm basically carrying over my posted links from Facebook and posting them C-Monster style (although she's a lot funnier than me). If this works, I might just make it a regular thing.

This week:

Legos for adults. (via) Not to be confused with ~~Legos~~ Danish Building Blocks for Nerds and Spurned Lovers.
HOLY CRAP LIONS (tours). An oldie but a goodie. I wouldn't want you to forget...
Did your favoured historical hero die of syphilis? More than likely! Amanda Manitach's new literary art blog features her heartbreakingly beautiful drawings of syphilitically "altered" genitalia and of the show, as well as decadently sewn or illustrated lamb's tongues.
Troy Gua's Monument is now up at Fulcrum Gallery in Tacoma. See Ryan Molenkamp's review and Amanda Manitach's review. Take a day trip, Tacoma's not half bad!
Do you find you have a hard time memorizing the infinite numerical content of Pi? Me too, but this song helps. You know. Just in case you need to whip this information out at the next of many math-nerd parties you regularly attend.
Speaking of nerds...Metrix Create:Space is a [relatively] new hacker cafe in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. Among the services they provide that I find particularly attractive is their resident Makerbot. You can bet I'll be taking advantage of this soon. More information here.
And even more nerds... to me it's not as much about nerds not "getting" contemporary art (in fact I'd argue they get it even better than most) as it is about Slashdot being largely populated by trolls in much the same way as the SLOG. (via Jen Graves)
Sound artist Andreas Bick's blog Silent Listening features a recording of sound wave dispersion in ice sheets which absolutely blew my mind - I can't stop clicking play. Please go through this blog as much as you can and immerse yourself in the beauty of his hard work.
Go see The Frye Museum's current show featuring Tim Rollins and KOS: A History. More from me to come on this exhibit, but in the meantime you can read Joey Veltkamp's review of the show and Lucas Deon Spivey's introspective post about education and art on his blog Meaning in Art. Regina Hackett discusses Tim Rollins' swimming upstream. Jen Graves touches on the political side of KOS.
Beccy Ridsdel's dissected china cups and plates, complete with hardware. Beautiful!
Naoko Ito's gorgeous jartree installations. Gala Bent likes it too, and how could you not? There's something sweet and wistful in this attempt to capture something that can't be contained in anything as confining or worldly as a jar.