Environment

J Henry Fair.
Heavy Metal Waste From Fertilizer Production. This is one of the top 10% most polluting factories in the USA. It is known to be a major emitter of lead, but the fertilizer industry in particular has been effective in pressuring the EPA to reduce the reporting requirements to which it is subject, making the clear picture of its emissions difficult.


Environment

"Population pressures, unsustainable practices, and consumption have led to severe pressures on our world. Much of the planet's land base is degraded by various forms of land use: overgrazing has degraded 680 million hectares worldwide, deforestation (580 million hectares), agricultural mismanagement (550 million hectares), fuel wood consumption (137 million hectares), and industry and urbanization (19.5 million hectares). Approximately 50% of our planet's land mass is occupied by forestry, agriculture, and livestock."

-Tensie Whelan. From the article People and the Planet. From the book Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape.

This is actually appalling, yet not that hard to grasp for me and probably many others. Industry and progression in technology and our technological and agricultural needs are putting tremendous stress on our planet and environment. The numbers are there and things aren't getting better. We currently have 6.5 Billion people living here, and within a decade it's sure to reach 7 Billion. That means more industry and more needs that will need to be manufactured and created with the current state of our lands. We must point out and create meaning and solutions to these problems that will only grow substantially.

"The redesign of our world will need artists to provide imagination, creativity and emotional connections - both to the mess we have created and to the possibilities we can create together."

-Tensie Whelan. From the article People and the Planet. From the book Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape.

What I feel is powerful about this quote is that it is a call to artists to change the world. To redesign what we know to be detrimental to our planet, our health, and the way we live our lives. We as artist have a responsibility, to create. But, as we create we need to allow ourselves to understand that we're all in this mess together, and as creatives, we need to analyze the situation and create something positive about the changing of our natural landscapes and urban territories. Especially photographers and people working in the realm of the visual arts. We have a gift that many don not. We can see things in a different light, so we need to act and become instrumental in our work and aim for a new tomorrow, today.

Artist Statement: Top Five Words

Top Words:

1. Land

Def.: an area of ground with reference to its nature or composition

2. Terrain

Def.: a tract of land, esp. as considered with reference to its natural features, military advantages, etc.

3. Manipulation

Def.: to handle, manage, or use, esp. with skill, in some process of treatment or performance

4. Spatial (design)

Spatial Design is a relatively new discipline that crosses the boundaries of traditional design disciplines such as architecture, interior design, landscape architecture and landscape design as well as public art within the Public Realm.

It focuses upon the flow of space between interior and exterior environments both in the private and public realm. The emphasis of the discipline is upon working with people and space, particularly looking at the notion of place, also place identity

5. Landscape

Landscape comprises the visible features of an area of land, including physical elements such as landforms, living elements of flora and fauna, abstract elements like lighting and weather conditions, and human elements like human activity and the built environment.


Top Verbs:

1. Exploiting

to use selfishly for one's own ends

2. Altered

to make different in some particular, as size, style, course, or the like; modify

3. Manufactured

to work up (material) into form for use

4. Conquering

to gain a victory over; surmount; master; overcome

5. Perpetuate

To prolong the existence of

Top Adjectives:

1. Formalist

In visual art, formalism is a concept that posits that everything necessary to comprehending a work of art is contained within the work of art. The context for the work, including the reason for its creation, the historical background, and the life of the artist, is considered to be of secondary importance. Formalism is an approach to understanding art.

2. Natural

existing in or formed by nature

3. Monumental

resembling a monument; massive or imposing.

4. Remnant

remaining; leftover.

5. Sculptural

To change the shape or contour of, as by erosion.

Top Nouns:

1. Ramp

The use of land or created or manufactured object to be used in generally extreme sports.

2. Trail Marker

is the practice of marking paths in outdoor recreational areas with blazes, markings that follow each other at certain — though not necessarily exactly defined — distances and mark the direction of the trail.

3. Space

the unlimited or incalculably great three-dimensional realm or expanse in which all material objects are located and all events occur.

4. Land

(See top words)

5. Landscape

(See top words)

Pieter Hugo

Mallam Mantari Lamal with Mainasara, Nigeria 2005. Digital C-Print. 117 cm x 115 cm


Abdullahi Mohammed with Gumu, Ogere-Remo, Nigeria 2007. Digital C-Print. 117 cm x 115 cm


Mallam Galadima Ahmadu with Jamis, Abuja, Nigeria 2007. Digital C-Print 117 cm x 115 cm


Alhaji Hassan with Ajasco, Ogere-Remo, Nigeria 2007. Digital C-Print. 117 cm x 115 cm


I chose Pieter Hugo because of how he came transform his subject and balance them within a frame. There's something haunting about Hugo's Hyena & Other Men series, I love the use of the unsaturated palette in what many people around the world view Africa as a very colorful/vibrant and diverse continent. Since I have been working within a square format for most of this semester, i felt that I needed some more inspiration from someone that uses it. To continue about the color, I also use that desaturated palette with much success, I feel that adding a coolness to the image in those sort of lush condition adds a nice juxtaposition to the concept and the imagery.


Quotes:

"In Abuja we found them living on the periphery of the city in a shantytown - a group of men, a little girl, three hyenas, four monkeys and a few rock pythons. It turned out that they were a group of itinerant minstrels, performers who used the animals to entertain crowds and sell traditional medicines. The animal handlers were all related to each other and were practising a tradition passed down from generation to generation. I spent eight days travelling with them."

-Pieter Hugo


"Pieter Hugo created the series The Hyena Men while traveling in Nigeria with a troupe of animal charmers and their collection of tenuously domesticated hyenas, monkeys and snakes. The portraits feature groupings of men and animals surrounded by the barren urban centers of northern Nigeria. Taken during quiet moments between the spectacles of street performances, the photographs depict a stillness that subverts the tense physicality of the animals and their trainers."

-Yossi Milo (press release)


BIOGRAPHY
Pieter Hugo was born in 1976 and grew up in Cape Town. He underwent a two-year residency in 2002-3 at Fabrica in Treviso, Italy. In 2009 he had solo exhibitions at Tinglado 2 in Tarragona, Spain, and the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney, Australia, among other venues, and in 2008 at Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool and Ffotogallery in Penarth, Wales. Recent group exhibitions include Street & Studio: An urban history of photography at Tate Modern, London (2008); Make Art/Stop AIDS at the Fowler Museum, UCLA (2008); An Atlas of Events at Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (2007); the 27th São Paulo Bienal (2006); and Street: Behind the cliché at Witte de With, Rotterdam (2006). Hugo was included on ReGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow, 2005-2025 (Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, and Aperture, New York), an exhibition identifying 50 young photographers who will be considered great by 2025, accompanied by a book published by Thames & Hudson. He won first prize in the Portraits section of the 2006 World Press Photo competition, and was the Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art 2007. In 2008 Hugo was the winner of the KLM Paul Huf Award and the Arles Discovery Award at the Rencontres d'Arles Photography Festival in France.

Biography is from the Michael Stevenson Gallery


Website
Interview/Review
Galleries

Joseph Smolinski

Spinning Tree for Spent Oil. 2008. Watercolor and graphite on paper. 15 x 22in



Cemetery (2009), Ink, watercolor and graphite on paper, 26 x 40 inches


Still from Tree Turbine Study (Rest Stop). 2007. mixed media.


Temple. 2008. Graphite on Paper. 11 x 14in

Joseph Smolinski is from the midwest, he went to University of Wisconsin River Falls and he received his MFA at University of Connecticut.


What i like and want to take from his work is the environment aspect of the landscapes that he presents. Many of his artworks revolve around the idea of reusable energy and the landscape that it is depicted in. His illustrations show the blending of earth, science, and technology. He uses the idea of a "Frankentree" a tall deformed tree that has been inhibited with technological objects and features. The inspiration for this work was when he saw a cell tower that had been changed to take on the appearance of a tree, as if it would help rather than harm the natural beauty of the landscape. I feel that there's a hint of that in my work, whereas many of the ramps and trail markers that i photograph take on the natural aesthetic as to blend in with the region it's being photographed in. I still haven't determined how politically inclined, if at all, my work is going to be. I feel that there could be an element added to it to make it political and environmental, but I also feel that it could contaminate the work and that it really isn't about how destructive the manipulation of the landscape of these trails are, but rather about the shared aesthetics and architectural and sculptural elements that lay in wait in these landscapes.


Quotes:

"the project...is more about the human relationship to nature as spectacle. We tend to have more fixed ideas about what 'natural' means than we are willing to admit, and we seem to put natural and unnatural on opposite ends of a continuum. But I am trying to poke at the way that the spectacularly natural almost turns fake - it's like a loop coming full circle."

-Nina Katchadourian
Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape.

"The land itself is in question. Power and politics trail in landscape's wake, because land itself is never un-ideological - at least not once humans begin to take its measure....Cicero called it "second nature," nature transformed by the human hand."

-Ginger Strand. (Essay) At the Limits: Landschaft, Landscape, and the Land
Badlands new horizons in landscape. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2008. Print.

Website
Interview
Gallery

Idea

Luck be a lady, Tonight

Is a random idea I came up with. possible eventual project, i just felt that i needed to write it down somewhere. The project Luck Be A Lady, Tonight is that a get a huge road map of America. Huge, the size of a wall. I then blindfold myself and throw a bunch of darts at the map. Marking the space that the darts hit, i will then map out a journey to pursue all of those landmarks. I will document and photograph the landscape/cityscape/socialscape/wastescape (etc.) of these places and create a cultural mapping of America through the chance of being hit with the darts. I use the terms "luck" and "chance" to embody the American dream, of hitting it big by chance and getting lucky to financial gain and wealth.

Goals for the Week

My goals for this week are plain and simple...

-I must edit more of my photographs
-not get sick again
-Print, print, print, print, print!
-Prepare my defense for the review

Mapping a City (Article)

Snapshot of Williamsburg, Va at a Freedom Park Bike Trail

Mapping

"As maps depict a representative space, its prevailing conditions and knowledge concerning space, and also incorporate an authorial standpoint as well as political, religious, cultural and facultative elements, the relationship of societal and spatial structures really is compelling."

-Nina Möntmann (in the article "Mapping. A Response to a Discourse.")

This is pointing out the potentials that lay in wait for mapping and art. I think that the author is trying to point out that the map is much, much more than just a map. It's a system of sustainability that can incorporate a vast amount of knowledge. Mapping is not just for roads anymore, it's for political, spatial, religious, and cultural uses. It is pushing for us to continue to blur the lines between the everyday road map and art. We need to further pursue the art of mapping in all genres of art.


"They [maps] generate the concepts of a social space open at its edges to subjective and subversive appropriations that reflect social realities and can create new ones. The strategy of mapping, in art as in other disciplines, thus has political potential that needs exploiting."

-Nina Möntmann (in the article "Mapping. A Response to a Discourse.")

This is a summation of the article pretty much in my opinion. Art and mapping have long been at opposing sides, reaching for different potentials, but as i feel mapping and art can be conjoined. The two need to be inter connected. Due to the prevent use of media and computer mapping these days and everyone's need to know exactly where they are at all times of the day, mapping is necessary to its and art's potential. The author is calling for us as artists to exploit the powerful nature of visual data, that being the map. It is political, ecological, geographic, and so many other things. Mapping is a cultural thing, it;s how the world became the world. Through mapping we have the ability to create visual meaning through data we collect and document the journeys that we lead.




Möntmann, Nina, and Yilmaz Dziewior. Mapping a City. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2004. Print.