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!