Your objects retain your personality even when you are not present in this space. They still sound like you, look like you, wait for your return… They do not define you, you define them.

Lately I have been thinking about a portrait as more than just a human figure or a facial representation, instead as a description of personality.

Elizabeth is in the business of light as well, but she was still happy when she saw that I made her glow.

Here’s one more for the road. Hand this girl a grey card and say, “This is just a test shot.” This has been happening since I was 16.

The forest preserve is Peabody Estate in Oakbrook, IL.

I’ve been on a mission to get myself into a good digital workflow so that I can go ahead and make the transition from film to digital. Hearing that one can tether capture using Lightroom, I thought I would give it a try/teach myself something new. It was so easy! Nothing is ever this easy! I tethered my camera to my computer, opened my Image Capture program (conveniently already living on my Mac), and set up Lightroom to ‘watch’ the folder that Image Capture sends files. Voila! The photos come right into Lightroom allowing me to perfect my composition, exposure, white balance, and styling all before I get myself geared up to go. Tethering via Lightroom works surprisingly well as a more budget-friendly Capture One tether (I already own Lightroom, and will just have to wait to acquire Capture One). This is a huge step for me giving up some of my romantic, antiquated ways and if I can only figure out a good method of making my digital files look a little more film-like I will be wholly satisfied.

For this test I requisitioned my brother to be my model. He’s so incredibly cute. I love his half-smile because I’ve seen this look half a million times when dragging him out of a good book.

Life is so sweet when taking photographs is this easy.

I’ve been challenging myself to be creative on a daily basis by creating at least a photograph a day using my Android phone and a mobile version of photoshop (posting over on my Tumblr). It’s fun and quick with enough control to allow me to keep my sanity. I had so much fun shooting at the Radiant Devices show, I couldn’t edit down to one.

This band is full of energy and dramatic as hell. You’ll get goosebumps at a live show.

Mojdeh Stoakley, Fyodor Sakhnovski, and Mason Payne make up this band. I apologize to Mason, the non-pictured drummer. He was hard to get a clear shot of and moved far too much for even a motion blur image. Next show, practice photographing the drummer.

I’m crazy excited/intrigued to see this show; this is the first time the Edelman Gallery is featuring non-photography based art. Follow that up with a visit to the Stephen Daiter Gallery (311 W Superior St, #408), reception 5-7pm, feat. work by Charles Swedlund (Circa 1955).

Swedlund’s photographs appear to be traditional black and white from an old (relatively unrecognized, but prolific) master. I imagine this will be a welcome balm in the midst of the rest of the night. Photography, especially traditional photography, has always been my first love. Do not get me wrong, I do not expect this work to be old and tired – if the gallery’s website is any indication these photographs will have an aire of mystery – photography is simply the artform that I understand and can discuss most rationally and ease. I expect the rest of the evening to be a challenge on my newly earned Contemporary Art legs.

If there is any time to spare, I would love to stop in at the Martha Schneider Gallery (230 W Superior St) and the Ann Nathan Gallery (212 W Superior St). Neither appear to have opening receptions, but will (hopefully) be open since other galleries are going to have receptions. The Schneider Gallery is another high quality photography gallery in this neighborhood and it would seem inappropriate to be in the neighborhood and not check it out – there is always something photographic that is worth seeing. The Ann Nathan Gallery appeals more to my love of classical art. The last time I visited there, I fell in love with Bruno Surdo‘s luscious paintings, and I hope to fall in love yet again.

On to end the evening in Wicker Park at the Jackson Junge Gallery (1389 N Milwaukee Av), reception 6-8pm, feat. work by Jason Brammer.

I am absolutely abound with excitement to see this work in person. I never thought that I would enjoy art with such three-dimensionality, but here I am. This attraction to such vibrant colors and work that I have to examine in person and from many angles is so new to me. I love experiencing art. It is almost inexplicable that I did not get Contemporary Art and suddenly about two years after I first began really trying to learn about it, something clicked into place in all those crazy synapses, and I started to get it. Now the challenge is to rationalize and explain it to someone who doesn’t understand the inner workings of my psyche. (Ohai!) Let’s see if I can’t observe, absorb, critique, and explain at the end of this art crawl.

There you have it. I have issued a challenge to myself. Can I live up to it?

-

A big thank you to Art Letter and Art Talk Chicago without whom I would be woefully uninformed with the going-ons in the gallery scenes in Chicago and likely only attend the opening at Catherine Edelman Gallery. Thanks for helping with diversification of art experiences!

Proust is one of those characters who seems to be quite quoted and quotable, but impossible to read. He is referred to by my favorite podcast with frequency and is even appears wonderfully in the title of a book I adore, Proust was a Nueroscientist. I came across the Proust Questionnaire over at this lovely blog and it hit the right chord. This questionnaire seems to not only reveal a lot about the person answering it, but it seems to be an insightful personal reflection. In fact, I would venture to say that is its greatest value. Imagine keeping your responses to this in a journal – answering anew every five years – and imagine how your answers would change over the course of your life and the value of looking back at your 20/50 year-old answers.

(A long deep breath here) Consider how personal that sounds. Now I’m going to make my first answering of Proust’s questionnaire public. So here goes; I hope it is not too much information.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Making art, reading a book, and being loved.

What is your greatest fear?
To lose me (the Self contained within this mass of neurons) or the people I love – through madness or brain trauma.

I fear that I do not have the drive/the willpower to really be successful in photography, assisting, art-making. Do I love it enough?

Which living person do you most admire?
Elizabeth Ernst - a wonderful photographer and artist. She who never had to fake it until she made it. Strong, demanding, unrelenting, fragile, successful, and surrounded by people who truly adore her. A woman with a rich, non-traditional life, and a true drive to create.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
My anxiety and fears – that which stands in the way of being successfully creative and reaching for my dreams.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Intolerance, excluding others (with cruelty) for no apparent reason, lack of intelligence (which is different than making stupid decisions)

What is your greatest extravagance?
Indulgences: self-pity and pastries

On what occasion do you lie?
I try to tell the painful truth, but find that white lies slip in. I hate big lies; I have too much guilt.

What do you dislike most about your appearance?
My thighs that always rub together and never quite fit into jeans right.

What is your favorite journey?
The pathways of my own psyche.

Road trips anywhere, heading south into downtown Chicago on Lake Shore Drive, Lower Wacker Drive.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I would make myself, my will, stronger.

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
Absolutely nothing.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
In short, making my own dreams come true instead of waiting for the world to decide.

If you died and came back as a person or a thing what do you think it would be?
I would like to be something that flies – maybe a songbird – , but I would probably be a timid, frantic-eyed, bunny.

What is your most treasured possession?
My Rollieflex.

What do you regard as the greatest depth of misery?
To feel the loss of a person whom you love(d), but loving is living and it changes you, so you are only ever as happy as your greatest misery’s reflection.

Who are your heroes in real life?
Elizabeth Ernst (she is inexplicable), Lisa Predko (a woman with an enduring drive for creativity), Lauren Simonutti (tragically damaged, but prolific artist), my Aunt Sue (a fiercely independent, self-sufficient woman even in the face of illness).

When and where were you happiest?
Interning with Lisa Predko, skinny-dipping with my best friend on camping trips, standing on the roof of the Drake Hotel, Cube-themed movie night with my cousins and siblings.

What is it that you most dislike?
Disloyalty (or brussels sprouts – they’re bitter and look like tiny brains).

How would you like to die?
At the end of a long life with a vastness and richness of experience behind me. Flying is how I would like to die – for the first and last time in my life.

What is your motto?
Your greatest love is balanced by your greatest sorrow. Life is meant to be felt in extremes, so feel the richness of experience and be changed.

This is not a room for relaxing. This is the room to spread out my photographs, to tack them up on the wall so that I look at them every day. This is the editing room, the processing room, the creative room, the pore-over-images room, the writing room, the absorb photographs room. Okay, maybe I can play in here, because I’m trying to be free and experiment with some new (art)work. Inspiration, I will be here for you  - on a daily basis.

The room is sunny early in the day and stays light much longer than any other room in my apartment. It’s covered in cameras and has an old oriental rug on the floor. This room has gone from being an unusable storage space of a (tundra) room to being my favorite, most useful room in the whole place – welcome to my studio.

I’m off to work in this wonderful new space of mine!

I’ve been making an effort to regularly look around for inspiration, especially the photographic kind, and what better way to poke around than on the Catherine Edelman Gallery‘s site. Even further I found that poking around in CEG’s, The Chicago Project, yielded some unexpected pleasures (and has given me a shorter term goal for exhibition – be good enough to be featured there).

Not only did I find that an old classmate is featured (Shane Welch), as is one of my idols (Leasha Overturf), but that my graphic design professor has a featured project. Sarah Faust introduced me to graphic design, taught me the joy of geeking out over typefaces, and most of all helped me create my entire personal identity system (website, business cards, even letterheads). Through our discourse I learned to embrace a design that fit my photography AND my personality.

All her wonderfulness as a mentor and professor aside, I somehow had never actually seen her work before. I had seen her website as an example of design, but never studied the images, by no fault other than my own tunnel-vision.

And this work is beautiful. Ethereal. Touching. I love the gaze in the image below. The attachment to mother. The grace to which Faust lends aging.

Mother’s Hands (2002) Sarah Faust

Untitled (Hands) (2004) Sarah Faust

And ‘bravo’ (to all above mentioned) on being in The Chicago Project – and giving me more dreams to aspire to.

More accurately this documentary followed her parents. Many of you may not know Francesca Woodman. She is my favorite photographer, providing me with boundless inspiration. She was the first child prodigy of photography; she began her body of work when she was only thirteen and had a full body of work by the time she killed herself at 23. She is tragic; she is damaged. She is fragile, and you can see it all in her images. As her best friend pointed out in the documentary, her photographs are a healthy expression of a fragile person. When the photographs stopped being created is when there was need for concern.

The documentary features a lot of interviews of her parents (the Woodmans), her brother, her childhood friends, her college friends, and (featured in video footage I was completely unaware of) Francesca herself. Oddly, I think the story that plays out is less an exporation of Francesca and her work which speaks for itself. She still speaks clearly through her images that are decades old. They feel current. She feels present, capable, precise. The story played out is about the Woodmans themselves. It is about their artwork and their process as artists and how that has all changed since the death of their daughter. It is about how affected they are by the loss of her. And how decades later, they have not come to terms with her death. This is more of a story of how the suicide of someone that you love changes your life forever, effects the rest of your existence, and how there is no real healing from that loss. There is an indescribable audio of her father speaking about her last day and that it was simply a bad day and that no one had the time for her. I say audio because I cannot honestly remember what visuals accompanied his words. I only heard at that point; it was a poignant moment.

All this said, I saw the movie alone, which is rare. But I believe this documentary was important for me to see alone. I needed to reflect and absorb the story of the first photographer who was an inspiration to me – the first photographer whose work helped pushed me into making the early stages of the body of work I now continue to work on. This movie was too reflective and too personal for me to share so immediately with someone sitting right next to me. It was a private experience, like much of the photographing I do.

I walked around along Michigan Av after the movie let out, strolling through an oddly warm, muggy winter night and found that such reflection on a story so poignant made the world glitter a little bit.

So I photographed it. I spent a good deal of time making a mess of my kitchen in order to perfectly style the image I saw into something that would actually translate into a photograph. In front of the lens is order and precision, behind the lens, behind me, shall I say that I am too embarrassed to exactly show the level of chaos piled off-scene?

Add this to the work-in-progress Untitled Psyche follow-up which I am giving a temporary (if silly) working titled of Psyche House. (*snicker* I know it is silly. Full permission given to make fun of me for such whimsy.)