Call for Artists Art Gotham

Art Gotham is looking for artists for its annual Square Foot Show/Election 2008.

"Politics and art? As impossible a mix as oil and water? Not necessarily. Has there ever been a more powerful anti war message than Picasso’s Guernica? The last year has shown that Americans want to engage in politics again. We do care what happens here and abroad. To celebrate the excitement now bubbling as the coming election approaches, Art Gotham chose the timely theme “Election 2008” for its annual Square Foot Show, which opens Saturday, October 25th and runs through Saturday, November 8th, 2008. Artists were provided with 12x12 canvases, and asked to think politically as they create works for the show. Nothing like a tough assignment for producing amazing results.

All artists will start from square one, a uniform 12x12 inch canvas, to create a fresh, new work from any medium (yes, photography and sculpture included). Canvases will be offered on a first come, first serve basis for $35 each which also includes the canvas, advertising, publicity, reception and art installation costs. All forms of payment accepted. Each artist can include up to six works of art. You can send a friend to pick up a canvas for you. Canvases/entry to the exhibit can also be given as a gift to an artist.

You will set the price to sell your Square Foot artwork! You will also be given a clear cover notebook insert to include your bio, resume, information on your art, images of your work, your website etc for collectors and curators to read more about you. ART GOTHAM’s Square Foot Show will be an excellent opportunity for you to promote your art to collectors, curators and and other gallery visitors. You will also meet many other artists. Art Gotham will choose artists for future solo shows from this group exhibit as well. This is a benefit for artists: you will receive 50% of the sale proceeds based on the price you set to sell the work."

REGISTRATION/CANVAS PICK-UP DATES
Saturday, September 6th 1pm – 5pm

Sunday, September 7th 1pm – 5pm

Friday, September 12th 1pm - 5pm

Saturday, September 13th 1pm – 5pm

Sunday, September 14th 1pm – 5pm

More details can be found here.

More from Isolation/identity

I'm continuing with my Isolation/identity project. The image above is a woman I met while in Amsterdam. The morning light filtering into her dining room had a wonderful quality so that's where she was photographed.

Art Crawl with Aperture

Last Thursday I went on an art crawl featuring Aperture artists' openings from Michal Chelbin, Paul Fusco, Josef Koudelka, and Polixeni Papapetrou. I was particularly drawn to Chelbin's portraits. Her subjects gaze calmly at the viewer, bathed in a gentle and hazy European light.

The exhibit is described as, "Exposing the world of performers and wrestlers across Ukraine, Eastern Europe, England, and Israel, Michal Chelbin reveals images that are both odd and ordinary to their viewers. The settings, costumes, and even some of the subjects themselves may seem exotic, but her portraits manage to unearth familiarity in the lives of her subjects. Strangely Familiar presents human stories from everyday life, those that exist in the space between fantasy and reality. By capturing her subjects in natural settings apart from their lives as performers, Chelbin creates a private moment for those who are living very public lives.

The exhibition coincides with the publication by Aperture of the monograph Strangely Familiar (essay by Leah Ollman), which presents the complete project."

ETA: Here's a post about Chelbin's work.

II Amerika

My dear (and talented) friends are in a group show at ICP called II Amerika. The opening reception is on Friday, September 12, 7-9pm.

The photographers in this collection exemplify the cross-cultural nature of America. While living here- whether American born, foreign immigrants or just passing through - each one represents a facet of this diverse society and has a unique take on its culture. There is more here than just a geographical link; each photograph in some way addresses the nature of American life. These pictures are grounded in a particular American reality, a ‘New Americana’ if you like. Regarding the collection, Robert Stevens, former international photo editor at TIME and current ICP faculty member, identifies the notion that: “America, truth be told, is fractured into a thousand pieces. But it couldn’t be anything else.”

Originally premiered as part of Bushwick Open Studios in June 2008 and entitled simply AMERIKA,this exhibition—II AMERIKA—further expands upon the themes and issues addressed in the original, showcasing a broader spectrum of work and delving deeper into the nation's psyche. Though it would be a mistake to suggest this is a comprehensive review, there is here the making of a statement about where the country is today.

If America is a democratic idea, then Amerika is the social reality. These photographers live and breathe its air, they explore its people and its landscapes. They photograph what they find and their discoveries give us a better idea of the State of the Union than any Presidential address ever could. And to that, attention must be paid.

I Met the Walrus

This is the recording of a 14-year-old Beatles fan named Jerry Levitan who snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in 1969 with a reel-to-reel tape recorder and persuaded Lennon to do an interview.

The recording has been set to animation by director Josh Raskin and was nominated for "Best Animated Short" in the 2008 Academy Awards.

Some of my favorite lines:

• "Protest but protest non-violently because violence begets violence."
• "Do everything for peace. Kiss for peace or smile for peace or go to school for peace or don't go to school for peace. Whatever you do, just do it for peace."
• "It's up to the people... We can change it. If we really want to change it, we can change it."
• "It's no good standing on the street corner shouting 'we want peace' and then beating up your mates. You've got to try and work your own head out and get non-violent."

Why Attend Portfolio Reviews?

Mary Virginia Swanson provides a summary of why you might want to attend one.

Eleanor Hardwick

Eleanor Hardwick is an English photographer I recently discovered. She has some beautiful images; there's a feeling of unease and whimsy in her work. And she's only 14 years old.

Tracking Down Those Twins

Danziger, from The Year in Pictures, has an interesting post on tracking down Diane Arbus' subjects.

Back when the Met had on its Diane Arbus show, David Segal, a resourceful staff writer for the Washington Post, wrote an interesting piece tracking down a few of Arbus’s subjects, starting with the “Twins”:

They remember none of it. Not the lady with the camera, arranging them by a wall at the Knights of Columbus hall in their home town of Roselle, N.J. Not the chocolate cake they had just finished, which is very faintly visible in the picture at the creases of their lips. The Wade sisters, as they were known before they each married, recall nothing about the day they gazed into the lens of Diane Arbus and became part of American photographic history. Unless you count the dresses.

"We still have them," says Colleen. "Our mother made them," says Cathleen. "They look black in the photograph but they're actually green."

They were 7 years old in 1967, when Arbus found the girls at a Christmas party for local twins and triplets. Nobody is quite sure how Arbus heard about the gathering, but a few parents obliged when she asked their children to pose. Which is how the Wade sisters wound up on a sidewalk, standing close enough to seem joined at the shoulder, their expression a kind of spectral blank.

It would become one of the most famous photographs of the era's most compelling photographer. Arbus killed herself in 1971, at the age of 48, leaving behind a gallery of characters -- some of them spooky, some of them bizarre, all of them vaguely tragic -- who won't go away. It's a menagerie of weirdos we seem to have known all our lives: those two men waltzing at a drag ball, that Mexican dwarf, the grimacing kid with a toy grenade.

They've been handed a peculiar kind of celebrity, the kind you don't ask for and certainly don't expect. One day you're minding your business, the next day you're immortalized in perpetuity beside "Nudist lady with swan sunglasses, Pa. 1965," or "Transvestite at a drag ball, N.Y.C. 1970."

What's it like to land in this hallowed collection of "freaks," as Arbus once referred to her subjects? It depends on which "freak" you ask, it turns out. The great recurring theme of Arbus's work is a sense of otherness, and if you talk to a few of her subjects you realize that in some cases she discovered that otherness in people and then committed it to film, and in other cases she somehow imposed it.

"We thought it was the worst likeness of the twins we'd ever seen," whispers Bob Wade, the girls' father. He and his daughters are visiting the Met exhibit one recent afternoon and at the moment are standing a few feet from "Identical twins, Roselle, N.J. 1967," the image that is clearly the star of this show. It's featured on the publicity photo and there's a bench nearby so visitors can sit and stare.

"I mean it resembles them," Wade continues. "But we've always been baffled that she made them look ghostly. None of the other pictures we have of them looks anything like this."

You can read the rest here.

Sia's Breathe Me

Sia will be performing at All Points West the three day music festival in Jersey City, NJ. Her video Breathe Me features the clever use of photos/Polaroids. I'll always associate that song with the final episode of Six Feet Under when Claire drives off into her future and sees her life flash by in a photo montage.

I found this version of Breathe Me that's even better than the recorded version.

Custom Shower Curtain

I just found a site called PhotoShowerCurtain.com which sells 100% custom shower curtains. You send them a design or photograph and they will print it on your shower curtain. It's another example of using custom imagery and I wonder how some of my photos would work on this medium. Nude in the bathroom...I know, too obvious right?