I’m always looking for a way to reproduce paintings that I remember in the camera, but recently I’ve been adding drawings in too. This series of camera drawings are multiple exposures made in camera, and for me they replicate the way I see and move: glancing from place to place, walking around or toward an object. When the atmospherics and weather permit, the result can be a close to a gesture drawing as I would like. Here are two galleries for now.
I usually avoid shooting in January here in Northern Minnesota because I hate -20 weather. This year the weather has been kind, and I’ve been out and about a bit. While I’m still sorting through and printing this work, this is one popped out just because it looks so much like the charcoal drawing I would have done had I ever bothered to draw this stand of hybrid poplars. It’s an in-camera multiple exposure on my Nikon D300 with a lot of jiggling, taken on a day with thick fog, flat light, lots of ice on the trees, no processing beyond that. My father in law, Bud Morgan, who was a WPA printer and painter would have loved it.
After Sanford Gifford
This is yet another photograph taken because I had seen something similar 30 years ago in art history class, where I drew the composition of the paintings as the slides went by, making it stick in my memory. That class, taught by Rena Coen (Joel and Ethan Coen brothers mum) gave me my first and preferred view of America, oddly enough. For me these paintings became a sort of comforting if highly fictionalized view of a county I was living in but had not yet explored. Nowadays I walk out with my camera in these wild forests, and there are moment when I see the kind of landscape that painters such as Cole, Church, Friedrich, Blakelock, Gifford saw, and I’m amazed that I can feel so connected to the land through them.
This is photograph, After Sanford Gifford is on view at the North Dakota Museum of Art now. It is 30×42 framed, and for sale in the annual Art Auction, November 7. http://ndmoa.com/artauctionfall08/index.htm
If you are interested in any of the many works in the auction, you don’t need to be there to bid. Instruction are online. I like this because the winning bid is split between the artists and the museum. It’s a great museum under director Laurel Reuter, and the fundraiser is a worthy cause.
Remember Every Detail in an Instant
There is a great exhibition at the Helen Day Art Center which I found out about and and uploaded a few images at the very last minute. I wish I had taken my cell phone photography more seriously, but then again, that’s the beauty of the cell phone. It’s a memory marker. It’s a great thing to document the cats and chickens, remember a good dinner. (I didn’t enter my cat or dinner photos, cute as my cats and chickens are.)
I have a few landscapes (of course) which are more like notes on an idea than good work. And I have a couple of panoramas made right in my iPhone with software by Debacle. The goal of the software is to stitch together images seamlessly, but the temptation to document in time rather than space and imply a narrative were in these images. Here are two, I might post more. They are actually huge at 55″ so these are paired down a bit. You’ll need to click on my images here to see them at a decent size. There are some interesting photographs in this exhibition, some mundane, some spectacular. You can see all the entries on Picassa.
Cell phone cameras are the relentless eye of the global simulacra. Simple and everywhere, cell phone cameras have transformed how photography is practiced. Helen Day Art Center announces the first of its kind international call to cell phone artists. We seek entries that reveal the creative mind through this ubiquitous medium for a ten-week exhibition opening September 25th, 2009. Entries will be juried by the acclaimed photographer, Eirik Johnson.
This exhibition aims to exploit two unique properties of an emerging niché of digital photography — cell phone photography. The first is the ubiquity of the form. Nearly all cell phones contain cameras, making photography persistently available to novice and professional artists alike. How has this ‘availability’ changed photography? The second property this exhibition explores are the limits and possibilities of the medium. How will artists harness this new medium? What will the the relentless eye of billions of artists reveal?
Marple Tea (Remember every detail in an instant)
These pieces will be at the Blandin Foundation for the next year.
Werner 9/6 at 7:21:08
Werner 9/6 at 7:09:17
Continental Divide 7/14 at 7:02:46
Continental Divide 7/11 at 6:32:00
Faculty Exhibit. Talley Gallery, Bemidji State University May-September 2009
NEW WORK. Marley Kaul, Butch Holden, Marlon Davidson, Don Knudson, Vivienne Morgan.
BCAC, Bemidji MN June, July
BSU Faculty Exhibit. McCrostie Art Center, Grand Rapids July
Double Vision. Park Square Theatre, St Paul MN. May 20-June 25
The Northwest Art Center, Minot ND has a biennial Women’s Invitational Exhibition, and this year I am showing a video installation.
Dust. To Dust
While more men now clean the house than in previous generations, I would wager that it’s women who still put more time, or perhaps conviction, into this grunt job. However, according to the vagaries of current web research, women clean less often now than their mothers and grandmothers, (around 10 hours per week less), and more women are happier with the task of cleaning because they have thankfully/heartily embraced lower standards of cleanliness. The “White Glove Test” has turned to gray.
Dust to Dust is a collection of women’s thoughts, stories, truisms, about cleaning, and dubious cleaning tips. Contributors are: Jess Wilimek, Alice Strand, Lori Forshay Donnay, Georgine Gross, Barbara Olsen, Gayle Streier, Lorie Yourd, Pat Rall, Gayle Rixen, Geri Wilimek, Paula Swenson and Vivienne Morgan.
Click to view Dust. To Dust This movie is 844 megs and will take some time to download, approximately ten to thirty minutes.
November to January 2009. A Sense of Place at the North Dakota Museum of Art. http://ndmoa.com/PastEx/Pastexhibitions.html
After living in the United States for nearly thirty years, I still define myself as English. I almost live in two worlds, watching BBC television, listening to BBC Radio 4: all my news and sense of America is filtered through those sources. It keeps me happy to remain connected, but when I leave my house, the whole wild wooded landscape of Northern Minnesota tells me plainly: I’m not in England anymore. Of all things English, my identity is most closely tied to the English landscape. This series of photographs is part of my conscious effort to become connected to this country, and this land, to feel truly present in my surrounding landscape. I immersed myself in the local landscape.
See selected images from the exhibition, A Sense of Place
