Art Market: 2012

The Art Market at Tyler, a retail arts and crafts show, will featured approximately 60 artists. The Photography students at Tyler had a table where prints, books, and cards were sold.

Photography Atrium Gallery

September 25 - October 19, 2012

WORKS IN PROGRESS

features first and second year 

Tyler MFA Photography candidates 

Dimitra Ermeidou

Rebekah Flake

Joe Hocker 

Brad Jamula

Fall 2012 BFA Exhibition Schedule

Photo Atrium Exhibition Space
Basement/Garden Level
Tyler School of Art

November 6 - 13: Ivan Herrera + Victoria Berends
November 13 - 20: Roxana Hojat + Eunice Yu
November 27 - December 4: Melissa Brain, Travis Kniffen, + Mia Casoli

Please check back for reception dates.
Open and free to the public.
Everyone invited!

Interrogation: Donald Weber

A beautiful photograph, yes?
Due to the raging political climate these days I thought I would show this work by Donald Weber. Maybe you have seen it before, maybe you haven't, but it is breathtaking. As I have been doing some reading about the intent behind it and the "message" it is delivering I came to a conclusion that I often come to. It is really just about people, perhaps it is the perpetrators-- those who hold the gun or raise their hand in attack, the searing questions and mind-numbing hours of mental penetration. But what I am truly caught by is the feeling of being under siege. The moment where their words will decide their fate and define the outcome of their future. What has been captured is the despair of the turning point, the climax, the caged animal. Perhaps they are guilty, perhaps they are innocent but to me it doesn't matter, it becomes irrelevant in the face of pure emotion, of numb withdrawal.
Photography captures a split second and makes it something new, something monumental. This is a photograph of a mere moment in someones life but it feels like an eternity, it feels surreal, it is a moment that will sting their conscience and burrow deep inside. It will curl up and eat and breath and sleep with someone... we get to partake as viewers the permanency of another world.

xoxo,
Charlie

Welcome Back!

Hey hey TSA!
So I have graduated with my BFA and am now embarking on the craziest journey an art student can take
finding a job
Oh yes, so far I have gotten so close to jobs I can almost taste them but not quite. In the few months since graduation I have been thrown so many interviewing curve balls I can hardly think straight. I have been yelled at before I even got a hand shake, I have had impromptu computer tests, I have been involved in attempted internet scams, accidentally breached security systems and much much more. Ah the joys of the recent grad.
It has been humorous to say the least.

In other news we have SHOWS, I may be gone but I still love my photo department dearly and the talented individuals who are doing cool things there. So, as soon as I get a list I will post the dates and we can all bookmark or dog ear our calenders/sketchbooks.

GET READY PHOTONS!

xoxo,
Charlie
p.s. I heard one of the new photo grads won the chair race this year. Makin' us proud!

*photo courtesy of Tyler Exhibitions Facebook

In But Not Of: Tiffany Shelly

"This is it." says a large portrait of a woman who looks out at me defiant that I am seeing her this way. As I look further I see that she is being pulled, pursued, trapped by this fabric that is so graceful and yet sinister in such a way that it becomes a character, a persona with attributes I can't quite put my finger on. I ask myself if I should feel frightened by it...but she is not, in fact she seems to dominate it at times. Her fingers grip the unruly thought, a controlling movement that still exudes beauty. The spaces she resides in are so familiar, tiny totems I can latch onto for certainty but the walls are white-washed and the floor drops out from under me and I am left in limbo... as she is. As I look at these photographs I am left to settle on empty rooms, maybe this is where she will go next, but I become caught in them. "It is inevitable" she says, "This room will wait for you." I will be pulled and pushed, the ceiling will disappear and where I thought I was will be nothing like it is. In the last frame the woman brings the curtain to the windows ledge...perhaps to take it with her.

But of course, this is the world that I imagine when I look at this work, it is as beautiful as it is provoking. Nice work Tiffany!
xoxo,
Charlie

The End of the End

It's here. The abyss is looming ahead of me- the unknown, the ambiguous, the unwritten. I am armed with many skills, the most valuable I will divulge
1. I can survive on 15 bucks a week
2. I can go 8 days without a shower
3. Exceptional problem solving skills (see 1 and 2 for details)
These are the basics, thanks TSA! You did me a solid these four years. Go into Photo these last couple weeks and all you'll hear is something about this or that show, gig, business venture, contest, ect. It's the big leagues, it is time to shine and to fall and to screw up and to do something crazy and daring and to take a major chance. That's what we did when we scurried in to Admissions and showed  work that was probably horrible but we made it in anyways. I am excited and freaked out but strangely feeling so anxious to start making new work (coping mechanism anyone?). For everyone not graduating-- keep on keepin' on! Every time you decide to go back for another semester in art school you are deciding to be challenged deeply. And if you aren't challenged I have a few Professors I can suggest!
I have more reviews to write, and more tears to shed...and two final papers.
Maybe I will see you at graduation, or in grad. school, or sneaking in to photo because I miss it so much.
xoxo,
Charlie

Claire Desalme: Escapes

While depicting nature through photographic form is a raging challenge, this body of work rose to that and I believe successfully conquered my own bias and baggage surrounding this heavily historied photographic genre. I don't think of nature when I look at it, it has transcended that frame and pushed me into another, a place that could surround me with its calm color palette and unnerve me with its own point of view. The positioning of the horizon line borders on unsettling, and I question if I could possibly go there or if I am stuck, a wanderer who never reaches a destination. These ideas of place, certainty, and direction (be it specific or ambiguous) are crucial in this work. But others have been there before me, I look at what they left behind, or what it left behind-- there is the knowledge of the other. Perhaps they were as lost as I am, and yet I begin to believe this way of being lost is a mere term, neither negative or positive... it just is. I enter into this expanse of landmarks and they are a tribute to different states of being, to emotional states, to subconscious states, they are an image of the resting place.

Congrats!

xoxo,

Charlie

This FRIDAY

Wow I can barely keep up with this show schedule (as you can see). But this Friday we have 3 more undergrad photo exhibitions!
Melanie Green
Stephanie Foltz
Tiffany Shelly
I am so excited to see all of this get put up! Keep on keepin' on
xoxo,
Charlie

Haley Richter: Projections from the Cave

These images take you away into a world that questions the very nature of place and object. They become fused together but in a way that encourages uncertainty, they coexist but not without the jolt of the out-of-place. The use of the square implanted in the images strongly references photography, I think of the white seamless put out there, this strange stagnant object that is always thought of as “universal”. Placed out in the world, it begins to censor its surroundings, and I am also made aware of the unnatural in this "back drop"… it is not universal, it is sterile in a world that is detailed and dirty and full of emotions. This work documents an idea but is suggestive of a thousand more. A man’s graceful fingers hold a small sheet of glass but he cannot see him self in it, he can only hope for a muddled view of what lays underneath…as I do. A glimpse of something that is just under the surface of our daily existence but the viewer must decide what that is, the truth beneath reality.

Congrats Haley,

xoxo

-Charlie

Review: Cally Iden

I suppose "sweeping" would be the word to describe it.

Last week, Cally Iden's photographs made their way to the Temple Gallery for her MFA Thesis Show. Walking through her space you couldn't help but be pulled by the work's grandeur presentation. Elevated above the birds eye, Iden's photographs take on a topographical viewpoint giving each viewer permission to get up close and evaluate every little detail. What we find are markers, holes, shadows, vessels, and most importantly color. Rarely am I on the side of color when it comes to photography especially with it being constantly misused, but Cally repels my preconceptions by giving color its habitual needs.

By placing the works on the ground, we begin to feel the distance. Not only the specific distance between the camera and it's plane of view but also between ourselves in relation to the world we inhabit. Im not describing the deprivation between nature and human beings, but rather the isolation I felt looking into the vastness of the earth's surfaces. There is an acuteness presented here, that extends further beyond the socio-environmental claw giving us a sweeping sensation of weightlessness.

Congrats Cally!

Review: Chip Colson's Horizons

A translucent streamline functioning on behalf of where water submerges itself within the surrounding space gives us a clear sense of linearity. Chip Colson's Horizons (now on display at Tyler School of Art) benumbs the viewer as we peer into a more scientific display of how photography can work. Minimal in presentation, and void of any color, Chip breeds a familiar, yet detailed examination of the uninterrupted functions that rhythm, movement, structure, and space have on the constructive world we inhabit. The water on the horizon, both physiologically and poetically remind me of how far this notion of one's destination can expand, undeviated, towards the frontiers of humanity.

Congrats Chip!

Review: Christian Suchecki and Sophia Mariano

Christian's alternative work draws the viewer in with larger then life portraits. These cyanotype's are pieced together in such a highly constructed way I can't help but become deeply invested in the Artist's Hand. Varying shades of blue unite a group of people who otherwise could have nothing in common and I begin to look at them in such a way that I would never have before. I know I would pass them by on the street or at the bar, but here, in tattered imagery they turn into emotion that pleads for my attention. 

Sophia creates a stream of profiles lining the wall. The images are shown with the smallest detail on glass and speak to the universal way of communicating. This tried and true act of the profile, the human form is as universal as it is unique. But I am not an observer, I do not feel as though they are me and I am them. Rather, I feel as though this is a call to thought, an analysis of human beings. The glass they are printed on becomes a massive slide for me to peer at through a microscope. These objects are both precious and industrial with large bolts keeping them in place but their very existence borders on fragile. 

Reception 6-9 this Friday the 13th!

well done

xoxo,

Charlie

Review: Jessica Stewart and Keristin Gaber

"I am here describing the taste of water to no one and everyone in particular."

This is the first sentence that each viewer will see peering through what seems to be a torn-out eyehole. It's a phrase, without a doubt that you will ponder before and after your walkthrough, as it unintentionally frames the works of artists Jessica Stewart and Keristin Gaber.

Due to this year's NASAD review, each senior has had to pair with one another, splitting and sharing their show space to accommodate everyone's BFA opening in an orderly fashion. Given the minimal space we have in the photography dept., what seemed like an oppressive task has now been indisputably diverted by Jessica’s and Keristin's collaborative show Mid/Way.

Both infinitely distinct and seamlessly integrated, the pieces on the wall call for our attention. Varied through whispers and shouts, the works are as uncompromising as they are vulnerable.

It is just paper after all. (and glass)

To be fooled twice is humiliating enough, but three times, well that’s past the point of absurdity. This is Keristin Gaber’s claim. Her work discloses the nonsensical while simultaneously tries to reason with it. To me it's an endless breath; the immovable shadow avoids its architect and by doing so creates its own agenda: a new one. Each piece follows a similar role.

Fool Me Thrice could be seen as a reactionary element, fulfilling the establishments of a space while also protesting the preconceptions that leach onto it. Underneath the interface of its sincere composure, lies a hint of turmoil, proclaiming an unwritten declaration of the absurdity that comes within it.

As Keristin revises our surfaces by stripping them of their concreteness, Jessica Stewart decidedly side steps the walls by punching right through them. A feeling to fall is present; reminding us that depth is the greatest of heights. Each hole is an examination of fear, a psychological mystique that only a patient with cunning ambitions could portray.

Earlier in the year, I would have described Jessica’s photographs as concealed wounds, an inescapable presence absent for the mind to penetrate. Looking at the work now I must digress. The work assures you that the obscure will never cease to expand. A small transformation of scale has liberated the photographs to their fundamental state, and each hole, collapsing the surface of each construction, abides synonymously within the cracks of our skin, the breaks in our bones, flooding straight to the darkest depths of our psyche.

Within the hemisphere of art, subjective reasoning can be as claustrophobic as it is ambiguous. Sometimes it is best to think of your frame…

…So again, this is just paper I’m writing about. Paper In Space. (Oh and glass too)

Congrats to both of you,

<3 <3 George

-Now that we are in prime show season, expect reviews from both Charlie and me in the upcoming weeks. Also make sure you come to each show. THERE ARE SO MANY!!!!!

Show Season

get ready

s p r i n g b r e a k

Now you can all shower, sleep, eat 3 meals a day, and do all your homework that you couldnt do because you spend all your time in class. I have waited SEVEN WEEKS for this glorious moment. Here we go...

xoxo,
Charlie

Soramimi Exhibition

Roxana Azar has done it! I can tell you right now my friends, this is going somewhere. A few months back I wrote about this project and now it has been turned into a show. Soramimi is here in Photo, a live exhibition of various artists around the world who have all responded to Roxana's call for collaboration. Also, meet the curator in the flesh before she is too famous to remember you! Come check this out!
Friday March 2nd 5-7 p.m.
Tyler: Lower Level
Photography Triangle Gallery
Major props to this Zine-Turned-Reality
xoxo,
Charlie

SORAMIMI

BANG--March 2nd, 6-9 p.m.

BOOM! Baa-ZING!
Tyler MFA Crew is having a group show. This is a chance to see what this phenomenal gang of off- kilter art-heads are truly made of. We are lucky here at T.S.A. to have such a brilliant slew of Grads, and I can only speak from what I know.
Don't forget-- there is an opening and closing reception! Show your support-- see your competition-- or just plain enjoy yourself!

xoxo,
Charlie

I am broken

There is a price we pay, working with chemicals, manual labor, and other weird stuff. When you pick your poison just remember there is a cost to pay. Sometimes the price is high and you find your mind in a constant state of chaos, "what to do, what does it all mean? bbllaahh life!" or it can be physical; our poor bodies hunched over teeny tiny keyboards and squinting at images under a dark cloth. I for one seem to be without feeling in my right hand... MY RIGHT HAND. After cutting 400 (FOUR HUNDRED) paper hearts, I have pinched a nerve and am in a sort of blissful state of ignorance. See how I'm still typing? Look how dedicated Charlie is. In any case, once again I will quote our favorite Photo-head, Rebecca. This is a lifestyle people. Please don't pinch your nerves, that is a sign of my stupidity more then anything (I mean c'mon paper hearts?!)
But in a silly way my heart belongs to the paper world, and perhaps I would even take a bullet/pinched nerve for it.
Love what you do, don't loose the dream, don't let being realistic take something from you.
All the best, from my fingers to yours,
xoxo,
Charlie

A.S.S. (annual student show)

Congrats to all the Photons who entered the Juried Show and a special woot woot to those who got accepted!

We have a really great gang here in Photo, and I think I speak for everybody when I say "Hell yea brosky! Look how far we've come!" or something like that.

Here is the part where I shout out to the Photo Krew-

Assiran, Emily

Bellitto, Juliana

Dixon, Sarah

Gaber, Keristin

Giacomucci, Matt

Hojat, Roxana

Mariano, Sophia

McCafferty, Samantha

Richter, Haley

Shelly, Tiffany

Stewart, Jessica

Suchecki, Christian

Rock on little Photons, Rock on

xoxo,
Charlie

Movies For Photographers: Persona

Before I begin writing, I would like to thank Brittany, who continuously pressured me to watch this feature.

Being, Nothingness, Existence, Consciousness, Collection, Relation, Reality... Concepts. All Concepts. The foundations of our message. The kindle of a medium. Exerted from the pillars of philosophy, psychology, and social thought, Ingmar Bergman's Persona reveals it's horrifying intention within the first five minutes. The light is sparked, the film accelerates, and the curtains begin to roll back revealing a congruence of images, which is the cinema. Bergman's prelude to Persona acknowledges the origins of the medium, while also memorializing the state he was in during his recovery from pneumonia. It was his role as a patient that enacted the writings for Persona's eventual script. Within this context, which is clearly represented at the end of the prelude in the form of a boy laid out on what seems to be a hospital bed, the story discloses itself not only to the recovering auteur, but also to us: the audience.

The principle story follows the relationship of two women. An actress named Elisabet, who has recently become mute, and her nurse Alma who is summoned to take care of her. Without any delay, the viewer is made keenly aware of the minimalist aesthetic set forth. Graced with the magnetic allure of black and white photography, Bergman repeatedly captivates the viewer with enigmatic close ups of the two actresses. It is here, without words, that we get ingenuous insights from both Alma and Elisabet. Bergman stated himself that “…the human face is the great subject of cinema. Everything is there.” Clearly poised to convey such emotionality, the director makes it a goal to capture the sometimes-banal transformations that can occur within frantic movements that usually go unnoticed. The film’s fundamental demeanor can be symbolized by the nominal attributes of a human face.

The basic marker of Persona is the Singular. The act of one Role. Bergman’s scheme however, is the act of one role played by two. The Patient and the Nurse, the Listener and the Speaker, the Thinker and the Actor. Though his representation of this is rather literal (there is nothing hidden in this film), the squares we reside ourselves in is often obscured and indefinite. The actual roles precede our inhabitance of them. Therefore there is an elusive delineation of who is who and if it concerns the eventual outcome. Throughout the film, there are great scenes of social transcendence. The generally known is unforgivably a façade for the unknown. Bergman sets a sterile environment, a house on an isolated beach, for this experiment to enact properly. The two women fall in and out of identity, creating fervent reprisals as well as cathartic hospitalities to one another. These emotive swings are visually astounding to witness.

As reality tries to resurface towards the third act, one forgets that reality has already been present throughout the whole experience. The cinema screen is the retina of our imagination. There are instances when one must give the ambiguous characteristics of an art certain freedoms to direct one’s consciousness to wherever it decides to go. This film is no exception. Full of mystery and meticulous animation, Ingmar Bergman’s Persona sends us through a perilous course reminding us of the dysfunctional ties to these deceptive roles we submerge ourselves in.

Brittany told me while watching the film she could of paused at any moment and taken a screenshot.

I’d have to agree.

xoxo,

George

The Fall of Mankind...

How does Art function in Academia? I have moments every now and then where my mind is blown that there are professors who are giving grades for what artists are doing in school. Okay, so this sounds like a basic fact of life, why question it? Typically I don't, I struggle through the process of making and thinking and not thinking just like everyone else, the end result of a grade always seemed like a footnote. But then you find yourself in new territory, all the sudden you end up in a class or a system where it isn't about trying, or deeply learning (mistakes being 90% of that activity). You find yourself being aware of calculations being made against you (or for you) and how do you respond? Do you fight it, or do you wave the bleak flag of surrender? I know you might be thinking that this is a ridiculous dilemma, but I think it would also be a huge surprise to see how the tone of your work shifts when you are allowed to feel that knowledge and experience trumps the satisfaction of a paper devoid of red ink. I would never say that grades shouldn't be involved, (only in a perfect world) but I do think there should be a hierarchy of value. I have been lucky, and truly feel that for the most part I was gifted the chance to believe and pursue work that I desperately needed to make, and was supported in my endeavors. However there is always the time where I am confronted with the other world and I can feel it grate like sandpaper against my insides.

xoxo,
Charlie

Submissions- Conveyor Magazine

I believe I can speak for all of the department when I say it was a pleasure to have the MFA students of Parsons come over to share their talent and creative work with us. I was fortunate enough to meet and talk with some of their artists including the head of the MFA program. Needless to say, there was some great art on the walls but I honestly believe many of us can be right there with them. In response to their show, I think everyone in our BFA program (especially the seniors) should submit a piece to the magazine CONVEYOR.

Photography lies. It’s supposed to.

Harnessing the sophistry that is inherent in the medium, collaboration between artful deception and red herrings can transform a gritty alleyway into a golden field of wheat, make ghosts appear on the horizon, or portray a wolf as the proverbial sheep. The employment of deceptive clues, false emphasis, symbolic meaning, and other tricks of the trade is befitting photography; whether through enigmatic questions disguised as assertions, ambitious and decadent arrangements, or that which appears deceptively effortless and simple, photographs often mislead the eye.

We are seeking photographic and print-based work that interprets the theme of Smoke & Mirrors in a unique and provoking way. As always, the theme is open-ended. However, submissions should be thoughtfully considered before submitting.

The Deadline is March 4th.

Submit WORK!

xoxo-George