Photos and Spreads

Long time no see...

Hey friends... Sorry I haven't been writing. I've decided to combine my book of native flowers with my book from artist books which will now be on native Californian architecture. Even though I love the spreads below, my San Diego subject matter wasn't evolving into the personal transformation that I imagined. I wanted to be a contrast between my personal experience of where I grew up and my love of San Diego. So when I went back to where I used to live to take pictures, I realized this book wasn't really coming together the way I saw it in my head. I’m not admitting defeat, I'm going to continue to work on my San Diego book but it will not be my final project for this class.
As I was in Santa Barbara I notice all the amazing native Californian architecture. Everything from the historic mission to the current day courthouse is detailed and reflective of the original Spanish style architecture that we continually emulate in our current building style. I began to think about the contrast being architecture and nature and realized it is such as strong symbol for the different ways we live our lives. Everyone always tries to plan out their lives and inevitably changes will happen that evolve one's personality. These special occurrences are represented by the native plants of California inserted in my book. There will be text that joins the photographs to set the tone for life experience and true feelings that are never spoken.

Spreads coming soon...

Downtown Night Life

I attended the art show downtown at the Ivy Hotel which featured Eric Warner and Bob Hoste. Luckily I didn’t have as much trouble as other people getting in thanks to Grace who totally saved me and let me in the line with her. Otherwise I don’t think I would have gotten in at all. And I’m glad I did because everything was so beautiful! My favorite pieces were I think by a guy named Paul. The pieces reminded me of Rauschenberg, which is one of my favorite artists. He used most paint but also incorporated found objects and texture. The painting were pretty large scale, about 5 feet tall and 3 feet wide and some were quite abstract. I was really inspired by this mans work and it really made me want to start painting again. I hope Eric and Bob had a successful show and I look forward to seeing their future venues. Thanks for inviting me boys. ☺

...spreads...

More Spreads

The Book Begins...

take a look...

Vulnerable

You would never believe this dripping liquid off his face actually came out of his mouth. We viewed Oliver Herring photographing this man after he spit water with food coloring up in the air and let it land on his face. through all that filth...you can't help but stare at his eye! They capture you.

Typography or Design?

We viewed the work of Reza Abedini, Saed Meshki, and other Graphic artist from Iran. Their work was incredible! I can't wait to build around some of their ideas. The use of typography in certain page layouts was fantastic. Nothing is written in standard format. There is text on top on images, on top of other text, shaped around things, scrunched together, extremely large, and so many other styles. Being unable to read to text gave the graphic designs another design element. The text wasn't text any more, just design. How beautiful! i wasn't caught up in trying to understand the context or meaning, just admiring the images. I have many items of clothing that contain text in the graphics and people are always trying to understand and make reasonable sense of my clothes. Is that really the reason there is text abstractly place and interwoven with the graphics? maybe we should just let it be art instead of trying to make something of everything so we can have the power again.

Time=Change

I listened to Arturo Herrera talk about his experience of moving from New York to Berlin. He reflected on his artistic process and realized he previously had been producing without thinking, but in this new location he had time. Obviously, something that had been bountiful in his prior location because this singular element changed his whole artist process. He could now think. Wow, what a realization. To find that you now have time to think and you didn't even know you were missing that in the pass. This really spoke to me about the power of location. I've lived so many places and seen that live does so down and speed up depending on where you are, and more so who you are in that space.

Herrera states that he is "REcreating life through the camera". how interesting that it creates NEW life. the photo doesn't repeat it creates new. I feel as if I could see here staring at the screen and thinking about that idea for hours.

He combine many non-related images into the same space so the viewer was forced to combine them. We all think in such reasonable terms. Things have to make sense. What happens when they don't? do we make sense of them through our prior knowledge, our emotion, our third eye speaking to us what we do not think we see. Every viewer will have different internal experience and feelings and consequently every viewer will have a different message. What a more advanced way of commmunicating. It truely tells us that as humans we only see what we want to see. maybe what we see isn't even there.