March 2008 Archives

I have decided to become more active in one of my lesser focused arts, photography. I will begin a digital photography class this summer at UNC-Chapel Hill.

From when I was a little kid I have always played with cameras. I used to have three 110mm cameras at a time, with different levels of film and in a variety of places, so I always had a camera around me that I could use. I took many rolls of film, most being developed, some not. I almost never used flash, and hell, why would I? All of the images I wanted to capture were outdoors.

Later on, for a short time I began working with some simple point and shoot 35mm cameras. I didn't like loading the film very much and I had a hard time adjusting to all of the winding, rewinding and all of the other bullshit. I have very few 35mm images that I have saved. I hated my 35mm cameras (only 2 of them). They were bulky, annoying and just not fun to play with.

Finally in my film camera adventure I was a pioneer in making the switch to the APS (Advanced Photo System) film type. APS provided me with flexibility in selecting the format I wished for my images to be in, and it also recorded a lot of information about the images. Best of all, there was no pesky film to keep track of, the negatives get rolled back into their original tube. Unfortunately, APS would become just a sad film-based precursor to digital. APS gave me a lot to think about with the options for photography as an artistic medium, but it's advancements lead me to want to make the switch to digital as soon as possible.

In January 2002, I made the switch from film to digital. I soon missed the prints, but then adapted to the other ways I could share images, including through the internet. My original HP PhotoSmart 3.1 MP camera wasn't a great camera, but it got me started. I soon learned of getting my prints made online and having access to the same resources as I did with film. During my time with my HP camera, I became less enthusiastic about photography and my life began to change a little. I still don't really understand what happened with me, but photography dropped away as one of my mediums, and with it, my connections to art. A few years later, I discovered how far digital photography had grown and I discovered my present "casual" camera, the Nikon Coolpix N7900. Around the same time, I started spending more time with my friend Chris and we started sharing the N7900. That didn't go very well. Later that year, he received his own N7900. Both he and I take a lot of pictures, although, him much more than me.

Now, I have enrolled in a digital photography class at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for the summer semester. It is an online art studio course covering the basics of photography, as well as the use of manual controls on digital cameras to have artistic control over the outcome of images. For the course I have purchased a Fujifilm FinePix S5200 digital camera. I am hoping to take the summer to get back into photography and start keeping cameras around me like I used to, back when I would go through several rolls of film per week, except this time, there is no film.

I have been told that my drawing style most resembles that of Van Gogh. I am unsure how to take this comparison. It seems as though the similarities between us extend only to the use of short, repetitive strokes to establish a variety of shades as well as to create texture. For the past few weeks when drawing in class, my instructor has tried throwing me at every Van Gogh resource she can find, and one of my friends in the class has caught on and is now bringing me Van Gogh materials. I don't feel that I have much in common with Van Gogh at all, and I'm hoping this phase just blows over.

On the plus side of things, my instructor feels that I am developing my personal style well and that it is becoming very strong, whatever that means.

It is possible you could be reading this from one of two places, you could be reading this blog from a link received from the original site at http://www.ClayMentality.net/Blog, or you could be coming from the new location at http://art.livecurt.net. Either way, you have reached my new centralized art blog.

This new blog has all of the entries from the old ceramic blog, but will also begin having entries about other forms of art which I participate in. In my attempts to become a  more well rounded person, this blog will  serve as a public  journal of my adventures in art. This blog will probably remain as calm as it always has been, but at least now it will be all together. This is by no means a truly active blog, but it has its purpose.

One of the primary objectives of this blog will be for me to resolve some internal conflicts with myself and discover some of the meaning behind some of the symbols I use in my art. I have never really had a real reason for pursuing art, it has just called to me, which makes establishing reasons for some of the things that my sub-conscious mind pulls forward a bit of a challenge.

Welcome to the Art Blog at http://art.livecurt.net.

I can not continue seeing ceramics as an art for myself. I enjoyed the time I spent with sculpture, but it just isn't working for me. My vision isn't in the three dimensional forms now. I very much want to return to functional forms. Looking back in my collection of inspirational images, they are all functional. I like making things that people can actually use.

If I pursue ceramics as a career, I want to set up a shop where people come in to me and place an order for exactly what they want in the way of functional ware. I want to hand make bowls, plates, mugs or whatever for people. I want people to come into my shop and tell me exactly what they want, make a set that is uniquely theirs. One of the most important things I want to do is be able to give people the option to expand their sets or replace broken/lost pieces just by coming back to me.

I want to make functional ware because it is important to real people.