Photography exhibit at Utica College

For anyone reading this post in the central New York area, there will be an interesting photography exhibit next Tuesday, May 28th in the Utica College Library Concourse by Utica College students, under the direction of Professor Linnea Franits. Here's her description of the project:
 "In the fall of 2012, a group of Occupational Therapy graduate students handed out cameras to people with the goal of finding out more about how certain circumstances have impacted their lives. They gave each photographer a simple prompt such as ‘Take pictures of how your life has changed since your diagnosis of cancer’ and encouraged them to interpret this freely. The photographs that those individuals took and the stories they told about them gave the students a deeper understanding of how life events can deprive or enrich our own narratives."

playing around

Here are some images of potential composition ideas as I was playing around with the Ovaltine image. For those of you who know my work, you'll notice that these images are a bit different (although with my "voice" still present). I decided the other night to just try some things out. I want to be less rigid and I think it's good to just try new things. I hope you enjoy!

cropping

Now that my classes are over for a while, I am hoping to do a little more artwork. In addition, I am hoping to do a bit more posting on this site. But of course, even though classes are over, there's always time for learning! Afterall, I am an educator. I thought I would focus on "cropping" for this post. Last night I came across this nostalgic image from an Ovaltine advertisement.

I will likely use this image in an upcoming work. One of the first things I do is to crop the image in various ways to "discover" the best cropped image to work from. Here are some possibilities:

As you can see, each one has its own character; with the focus on various components of the image. I will probably "go with" the first cropping as it balances the yellow backgrounds (both in terms of position in the image and in shape). So many possibilities. In a way it reminds me of the cropped photography work of Richard Prince. What do you think?

simple pleasures

I suppose a collage can't get much simpler than this one. It's 2.75" x 2.75" and is comprised of only two elements. But I am enjoying it nonetheless. I've always been a sucker for color contrast on black-and-white (and vice versa). And I really am drawn to the imagery and cropping of this piece. Hope you enjoy it too!

"Esther" accepted!

I am very excited to announce that "Esther" was accepted and will be the cover art of the upcoming issue of the scientific journal "Learning & Memory". See the other artwork for previous issues at http://learnmem.cshlp.org/

"Esther"

I finished this piece this morning... which is a good thing as it is "due" tomorrow.  It was made for Dr. Robert C. Twining and will hopefully make it to the cover of the journal "Learning & Memory". Mariani Wine was a concoction of wine and cocaine from the late 19th century. The molecule that I transferred on is 17-beta estradiol. Bob's research - which will be published in the journal - examined the effects of estradiol on cocaine self-administration in rats. Enjoy! 

Apparition

FINALLY finished this piece this weekend. It was sitting around for over a year (I think significantly longer than that). Anyway, I felt inspired to try to finish it... and I did. The woman and the owl/butterfly wing emblem are both transfers. I love the dark color contrast between the trees and the roses. The piece is 11" x 14" and will be framed as a 16" x 20". Enjoy!