Week in Review again

Did anyone critique my work this week?

Why yes I did get a critique this week and i felt that it was very informational. People were saying that they enjoyed where the work of self-portraits were headed but they needed more information about the subject. Currently, I was presenting a hockney-esque collage of myself, fractured and put back together. They were saying that it needed to be more abstract and even more fractured to get the point across of being broken down, lost, out of place, and again fractured. People were also saying that the photographs needed more environment to be shown to help place this sense of lost that i am experiencing while living in RVA. I completely agree, i definitely need to show more of the space if i want to get that message across stronger. They also pointed out that in most of my portraits that my facial expressions don't seem to change that much and that i should explore a more diverse range of emotions and expressions. They also wanted me to explore a landscape of myself in my environment, which i would like to do, but i just haven't really found that certain area that i could explore that topic and concept yet. All of those were the strongest concerns of my recent work. But, everyone did seem to enjoy the idea of going into an anti-portrait way, by showing how I can make a self portrait of myself by using commercialism to represent me. I do plan on engaging in that concept further.

The Most Motivational/Creative Moment?

Well, the most motivational moment this week was getting my shit together for critique, that motivated me a whole lot. But, the most creative moment came to me during the fall break. It was when i got the idea for making my self-portraiture about commercialism and identity. I believe it came to me on friday, i was sitting in the studio editing and just thinking about random shit in my life when it dawned on me. I had been looking at this book i checked out on contemporary self-portraiture, and Mike Parr's anti-portraiture gave me this idea of identity through commercialism. I feel that this is a strong topic that I can spearhead really soon and intend on it.

What do I want to achieve in next week's studio?

I want to achieve this new idea of mine, the commercialized self portraiture. I also want to nail some food that can possibly represent myself into the wall and either photograph it or just leave it as an installation... sort of. We will see. There was also this one other idea I had floating around in my head. I wanted to use "intimate" photographs from the previous relationship, and combine them with other photographs of me and make this weird hockney-dada-esque collage with them. I have gotten permission from my ex-gf that it would be alright to do that so there is no ethical concern. But I think that that piece could really be hard hitting in my personal life and may be a good outlet for my self-expression.

Artistic Failure?

I guess that would be in this one photograph of myself where i was trying to show more environment in the portrait, but i didn't shoot it correctly, and with the use of my wide angle lens, it had too much distortion and just didn't work out. So, that was my failure of the week.

Profound thought?

Again, I hate to beat a dead horse, but it is the idea of the anti-self-portrait shown through products and commercialism.

no visiting artist.