Alyssa Martin Art @alyssamartinart - Tumblr Blog

A peak at my show from 2 weeks ago at the Biola Gallery

#photography #artists on tumblr #senior show #home #Even in Memory

First print done for my show!

Artist of Influence - Larry Sultan

Larry Sultan worked on a wide range of subjects, including images of his home where his aging parents lived together. I was able to see his work at LACMA recently and it definitely relates to my current work towards my show. His exploration of home is one showing where his parents lives have led and show their interactions on a personal level. My work does not show my family and instead shows more of the home than the direct interactions with it, but it is important to see where well known artists have taken the theme of home in their work.

Based on my reading from the BOMB interview with Larry Sultan on this series, I can see how approached this subject and addressed certain issues, such as fears of exploiting his parents. In this interview, he talks about his work and how he did not want to betray his parents through his images and how easy it could be for it to become a betrayal. The images are very personal for him and show aspects of how their attempts at the American Dream succeeded and failed. His parents set out from the East Coast to live in LA and came upon more challenges than originally hoped. However, they pushed through and were able to reach a level of the American Dream they could be happy with. This project shows where they ended in their goal.

Source:

Title: Larry Sultan Author(s): Catherine Liu and Larry Sultan Source: BOMB, No. 31 (Spring, 1990), pp. 50-57 Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40424771

#photography #Artists of Influence #Larry Sultan

Studio Production

Looking through potential show images!! Printed out a bunch (like 130) images that I have been considering for my show...I think it's been narrowed down to about 50 now. Needs to get down to about 15 for the show. That's the next step!

#senior show #photography #artists on tumblr

Artist of Influence - Todd Stewart

Todd Stewart is an photographer who has done series looking at the role of childhood and place. I really enjoy his work and the way that he has approached this subject. While not exactly what I am currently working with, there are themes and elements in his work that I have, or want, to explore in my own work. He does not use much artificial light, mostly natural, which allows for a natural beauty to enter his images. I also enjoy his landscapes and the way he integrates these with more home focused images.

In a Lenscratch article, Aline Smithson writes about his work, looking specifically at his series, First Light, Last Day of Summer. What she looks at in this body of work is his approach to photographing part of the American landscape, which is a popular subject. This looks at the way his children enter into the landscape, interacting with and exploring nature. His work brings up the question of whether the landscape can hold memory and how it can be accessed. He looked at the landscape he experienced everyday, and then at how he and his family call it home.

Source:

TODD A. STEWART: FIRST LIGHT, LAST DAY OF SUMMER, by: Aline Smithson

http://lenscratch.com/2013/08/todd-stewart-first-light-last-day-of/

#Artists of Influence #photography #Todd Stewart

Artist of Influence - Larry Sultan

Larry Sultan worked on a wide range of subjects, including images of his home where his aging parents lived together. I was able to see his work at LACMA recently and it definitely relates to my current work towards my show. His exploration of home is one showing where his parents lives have led and show their interactions on a personal level. My work does not show my family and instead shows more of the home than the direct interactions with it, but it is important to see where well known artists have taken the theme of home in their work.

Based on my reading from the BOMB interview with Larry Sultan on this series, I can see how approached this subject and addressed certain issues, such as fears of exploiting his parents. In this interview, he talks about his work and how he did not want to betray his parents through his images and how easy it could be for it to become a betrayal. The images are very personal for him and show aspects of how their attempts at the American Dream succeeded and failed. His parents set out from the East Coast to live in LA and came upon more challenges than originally hoped. However, they pushed through and were able to reach a level of the American Dream they could be happy with. This project shows where they ended in their goal.

Source:

Title: Larry Sultan Author(s): Catherine Liu and Larry Sultan Source: BOMB, No. 31 (Spring, 1990), pp. 50-57 Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40424771

#photography #Larry Sultan #Artists of Influence

alyssanmartin

These photos are made as an imitation of photographer Dorothea Lange, best known for her image of the Migrant Mother. Not a direct imitation, but inspired in style and approach by her images documenting workers in the Depression era and their spirit through trials.

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Artist Interview - Aline Smithson

Aline Smithson is a photographer now based in LA who balances between teaching, photography, writing for the Lenscratch blog, curating and traveling for festivals.

Because she juggles so many responsibilities, making time for personal work can be difficult. However, she tries to shoot non-specific work everyday, while planning specific shoots every few months. She also sets aside certain days to make art, especially during the summer when she is not teaching.

Her inspiration for her work comes from her family, and life. She also looks at filmmakers and painters for inspiration, loving the times spent in a museum or theater. Working on a photography blog, she sees a lot of photographic work, but prefers to look outside of photography for inspiration.

Her work is different from many other photographers because she works exclusively in film, which is not seen very often in contemporary photography. Since she uses film, she must be more intentional about each picture she takes and often takes very few images and must wait to see the outcome.

She has a number of different series that she works on continuously, adding to them as she sees fit. This reminds me that while some series must come to an end, there can be series that I continue to work on and may remain open-ended for years. Many of her series focus on home and family relationships, wanting to evoke a “universal memory” by creating moments that are both familiar and unexpected. I like that in my own work, wanting to bring forward elements that might otherwise be ignored due to their familiarity.

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Artists of Influence Round 3

Alice Hargrave

Alice Hargrave has a unique exploration of the theme of family with her series, untitled (family pictures), by looking at the ephemeral and familial. Her work looks at the passing moments between family life and tries to capture them. In my own work, I was wondering if there could be a way for me to combine the exploratory work I did earlier in the class that was more abstract with some of the more literal pieces invoking light that I have done before and this series shows that it is possible. I really like her use of light in this series, and the way she is able to bring both abstract and literal images together to discuss the home, is inspiration for how I can approach the subject as well.

Jessica Todd Harper

With Jessica Todd Harper’s series called The Home Stage, she creates a painterly atmosphere with her family, using natural light in a way that is really gorgeous. I believe many of them are staged to some degree, some more than others, but each setup is reminiscent of painting masters, combining her knowledge of art history to her photography in a directly tangible way. Her series involves her family in a direct way using them as the portrait subjects, which is not what I have been doing in my work, but her approach to these figures is really striking. She captures the light as it sculpts the figures in a way that I might seek to emulate.

Christiana Rifaat

As with the other photographers, I really like Christiana Rifaat’s series called So It Goes because of her use of the natural light in the home. Her use of shadows is also particularly strong, letting her show off the home in really interesting ways. She too is exploring the idea of change as it relates to home, but through a new home for her family that she does not call her own. I really like her style which uses a lot of neutral tones and not too many intense colors. This series she plans to keep open-ended and add to it over the years as she sees fit, which I think is an interesting approach to a family-based series. Some need to come to an end, and others can be added to years later. With my own work I will have to discover for myself how much I will want to continue adding and how to know when to stop.

Artists of Influence Round 2

Daniel Kukla

The series that brought his work to my attention is a series called "The Edge Effect". In this piece, he took mirrors out to different landscapes and set them up to look as like a plain air painting at an easel. Another series he has done is called "Captive Landscape" and it is a series of photographed animal enclosures, but specifically of the painted backgrounds within the enclosures. Both of these series deal with landscapes within another landscape, but in two completely different ways. These projects relate to my work because they look at the ways that humans and man made features interact with nature and wildlife.

Renate Aller

Renate Aller has a series of ocean and dessert scenes paired together entitled "Ocean and Desert". I like the way she is comparing two very different landscapes and finding similarities between the two. I am experimenting with pairings in my own work and it is interesting to see how she went about her pairs. My work also has had very clear horizon lines, which I am not always sure if I should ensure they always perfectly line up, or have some differences between the horizon lines. Looking at her work shows how both of these can function within the same series.

Alison Turner

With Alison Turner's work on the series "Vanscapes", she used her phone camera to take pictures of the New Zealand landscape from the inside of her van. Some of the pieces that I have done have involved iPod cameras and landscapes captured from inside cars on the road. Her approach is unique because she clearly includes the entire frame of the car window in the image rather than eliminating it from the image. Her hope with this was to include the viewer as if they were in the car with her, which I find to be an intriguing way to really bring the viewer into the work.

#Artists of Influence #photography #Daniel Kukla #Renate Aller #Alison Turner #landscape photography

Artist Interview - Laurel Dailey

Laurel Dailey is a local photographer based in Long Beach.

Her general studio practice is that she is shooting all the time. She often follows a cycle throughout the year of higher production in the early parts of the year during winter months, gets good work done in the spring and fall, but notices a slow down in production during the summer. She constantly has a camera, even if it's just her iPhone, and is shooting throughout the day, during the course of her daily life. In the process of living her life and its natural expression, she says, she is making images. She feels that it is important to realize that you do not have to focus on only one aspect of photography at a time, but instead let each element flow with the others, from freelance, to commercial to art and more, Don't get too caught up in one aspect of the photo industry and restrict yourself from trying out other things.

Everything can be a source of inspiration for her work. She looks at all kinds of visual media, from blogs, to TV, movies and magazines. And things encountered in daily life, books, ideas, other people and road trips are all instances of inspiration waiting to be found.

Her work relates to my own I think in part in the way that she shoots as a product of her daily life and routine rather than setting out with a particular goal in mind. I shoot because I enjoy it, but especially with the constant stream of projects from school, much of what I do is informed by that. As I continue to develop as an artist though, it would be good for me to actively make time for me to go out and photograph. Her Environmental Studies project is on that I particularly enjoy, as a lot of it relates to the interplays of light and shadow, which is something I really enjoy finding when I shoot landscapes.

#Interview #Laurel Dailey #photography #homework

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Artists of Influence

Kristine Thompson

There are two series of hers that I find interesting: Wanderer and As Gary Thompson and Bonnie Sherman. The first examines murals painted on buildings within German cities. It creates an interesting juxtaposition of nature and development. The second series involves the artist taking the roles and clothing of her parents and being photographed in these circumstances. I enjoy the way she switched roles with her parents and studies their relationships through these experiences. These two projects address two parts of my own practice, the study of home and family and then the role of landscape and the city in conjunction with each other.

Alexis Pike

I really like her series called Claimed: Landscape, which relates to Wanderer above. In Pike’s series, she photographs murals of the landscape and wildlife on buildings within urban settings. It looks at these supposedly picturesque images in odd places. She often titles the pieces after some other object in the image; an object that might otherwise be the focal point, but is overshadowed by the mural in the background. The juxtaposition of the “ideal” landscape in a non-ideal setting creates an interesting dialogue of what the landscape is to us and how we interact with it in its different forms.

Christopher Churchill

I enjoy his work, particularly his Landscape series and a series called Populous. His landscapes are reminiscent of Ansel Adams, following the tradition of black and white landscape photography often in well-known National Parks. His approach to editing is more subdued than I would typically use, there is less contrast in the lights and darks, but the images are still very interesting. His other series explores life and people in a small-town setting. These portraits capture the energy of the town and show little pieces of what the people there do for a living, while not seeming to intrude too far into their normal activities.

#Artists of Influence #homework #kristine thompson #alexis pike #Christopher Churchill #photography #landscape