April 14, 2006
A Breath of Fresh Air
This winter I attended the opening of a wonderful photo exhibit at a downtown gallery for the wife of a friend, who is a professor of photography. I may have even written about it.
One wall of this particular gallery is arranged as an ongoing installation. It is covered by 150 9 x12 clear plastic packets. Artists submit work in that size. If a piece of work is chosen, it's slipped into a packet and displayed on the wall on a rotating basis.. Some of the artists are selected from the wall for larger individual shows in the main gallery.
I thought it was a great idea, and took submission instructions for a dear and close personal relative. It wasn't until weeks later, when said relative showed such kindly appreciation for my thoughful gesture that it became clear to me that this gallery wasn't the path for him, and that maybe it might be one for ME. Although it took a very long time, due to my resistance, I have arranged for some 9x12 photos to be printed.
Actually, I was just sitting here fretting about what in the world I would ever do if I had to make a huge print for an exhibition, when I thought of a great way to exhibit my photography -- on monitors, with a screensaver slide show. Having watched my laptop screensaver show a few times, I think that it has some strange brainwave effect -- perhaps because the viewer generally has to do mental gymnastics to figure out what's going on.
In any case , one's work must be submitted with a resume. Oy. So I sat down this morning to make one for my life as an artist. It's painfully thin. So thin that it is best presented in paragraph form, as follows:
We like to think of Ms. Feinstein as an outsider artist of the techno-housewifery school. Since receiving her BFA in Stage Design sometime in the middle of the last century, Ms. Feinstein has been artistically dormant, with the exception of stapling up curtains in various venues, and making many outstanding Halloween costumes for her expressive children who always had big ideas that needed someone with construction expertise to execute them. She also did her share of gift wrapping and table setting.
Three years ago, she reluctantly took a picture of a sunset with a borrowed digital camera. Since the only technical skill that it required was pushing a button, and it also offered instant feedback, with an erase feature, she took to digital photography like a duck to water. Since then she has amassed a portfolio of such monumental proportions, that she has successfully clogged two hard drives.
She fancies her specialty to be the metaphorophoto and the metaphorophoto, often finding obscure messages from the woowoo in the pictures that pop into her camera, which she schleps everywhere, lest she miss a message.
Ms. Feinstein has had an online presence since 2003.
She will be happy to provide snappy commentary in free verse, upon request, to accompany any of her work.
Photo note: This is one of the picture I'm considering for submission. Maybe they'll just blow me off.
Posted by Dakota at April 14, 2006 10:33 AM