ART HISTORIANS AND ARTISTS

So today I went to Louisville with my art history professor Dr. Theresa Leininger-Miller and a retired DAAP professor named Lloyd (whose last name I never caught) to hear Linda Nochlin speak at the University of Louisville. Her lecture was on Misere: Courbet, Millet and the Representation of Poverty in the Nineteenth Century.

It was interesting in that I gleaned a whole trove of new artists to look at both from her lecture and from looking around the Speed Art Museum at which the lecture was held. Also I was simply impressed that she's still teaching and giving lectures. She's eighty years old.

But I did expect the lecture to be more theoretical and less... didactic? I'm not sure if that's the word I want to use. It was simpler than I expected. Not to mention that for a feminist she certainly focused on male artists more than I expected her to. I don't think I wrote down any female artists during her lecture.

I'm mostly glad I went, she had some interesting points and I felt like I could follow along quite easily, which I guess I'm not used to (maybe I've been in visual arts concepts too long).

I did get to use my brand-new Fujifilm Instax camera, which I was rather excited about. I received it as a 21st birthday gift yesterday.  

 Me looking ridiculous with my sister and my mom.

 I love that this camera makes any photo look like it was taken in the 70s.

 Laura Fisher and David Miranda-Klein.

 Linda Nochlin hiding behind the dude in the suit, and Theresa.

 

My favorite by far. The green thing is the flash that went off against the car window.

I'm heading into the darkroom tomorrow to develop some 100 speed black and white film, so we'll see how that goes. I'm also going to have to post about all the new comics and graphic novels I received for my birthday (primary amongst them were Jeffrey Brown and Shaun Tan, but there were many more excellent ones I had never heard of).

Also a comics-related side note, Carol Tyler was unable to come to class on Wednesday because her mother was ill, so she sent someone to take attendance, an older fellow with a slow deep voice and a head full of white hair. He took attendance and then took the time to tell us about how important lettering is in comics, and how we should develop several lettering styles to work with. Being a bit of a lettering geek I found it quite interesting but couldn't really think of any questions when he asked us if we had any, so he let us out of class early and we all scattered.

AFTER he left one of my classmates went, "so that's Binky Brown." And I had a minor WHATWHATWHAT moment. Justin Green just took our attendance?? He didn't introduce himself, how was I supposed to know it was Carol Tyler's husband telling us about letter-spacing? I have got to learn what all my favorite artists look like now. Man.

SPACE Columbus- the artists!

Well, right off the bat, I started following Katie Omberg at her blog. She does a comic called "The Very Real Story of a Real Gay Kid," an autobiographical comic following the story of her own coming out. The drawing style is cute, loose but not sloppy. Go look at her work, it's on her blog and on The New Gay.

Next up is Nate Powell, whose style really reminds me of Jillian Tamaki's. I bought his "Please Release" comic, but after reading it, I wish I had bought at least one other one. It is autobiographical, thoughtful and definitely worth a few more reads to take it all in. Look at his gallery of illustrations as well as his comics, I think they're really freakin awesome.

Ryan Dow won the SPACE prize last year for best webcomic, and I totally see why. In the spirit of Sinfest, but more personal at the same time, his Lil Buddha comics are hilarious and honest.

I got really excited when I saw Michael R. Neno's "Pictures of Benevolence" minicomics, because they are really similar to what I'm working on currently. His are more specific (and more ambiguous at the same time). I can't really describe them properly, but he can.

John Porcellino's King-Cat Comics are also autobiographical in nature, more anecdotal than some of the others in this list, but still really thoughtful. His drawings are sparse, but well executed and buoyed by his excellent writing. I got two of his and I'm thinking of getting some of the earlier issues, too. Here is his publishing blog.

I really loved one of the many free comics I received, called "FYI, IDK," by Max Ink. The drawing are lovely and the characters really well-formed.

Another free comic I received was titled "Sacred Heart" by one Liz Suburbia. I loved the character design, it kind of reminded me of Damon Albarn's Gorillaz designs, and also of Daniel Clowes' Ghost World. (Side note on two things--I bought myself a copy of Ghost World at Half-Price books while I was in Columbus, yay, and Gorillaz has some new tracks up here, holy smokes!)

There were a few people at SPACE doing hand-bound comics and one of the nicest was by Jessi Zarbarsky (and I'm not talking staples here, it was really nice paper bound in the 5-stitch method). I bought the one titled "Thursday," which has this adorable little out-of-panel character hanging out just outside the panel border on some of the pages. The drawing style is distinct and very clean, I'm definitely going to explore her work some more.

The last comic artist I bought a comic from is Nathan Kissel, who has really really nice color work. I bought his "Deserted Aisles" comic about a grocery store clerk who meets a magic genie, and it's well written and the main character is so forlorn-looking you just want to give him a hug.

I got some sweet business cards from about a kazillion people, so I'll just roll out a short list here, click at your leisure:

Evan Yeti by Mat Washburn.

Kenn Minter, comics and graphic design.

Peculiar Comics (this guy was handing out mustaches, I wore mine around until it started to itch).

E.J. Barnes had the cutest/ funniest greeting cards ever for sale. Example A.

I could go on and on and ON, but those were the highlights. Here is a picture of our table, with Carol Tyler's books there at the front.

From right to left: Allison Weyda, Amanda Ashley's coat (I have no idea where she went, she managed to avoid my camera the whole trip), Meredith Waddell.

SPACE Columbus

Goodness gracious me. I have so many people to talk about, I might have to do a whole second post on the comic artists whose work I got to see/ buy at SPACE.

Carol Tyler was there, of course, she was at the table with us and had her lovely books (You'll Never Know parts 1 and 2!) next to our sad little portfolios (next time I will DEFINITELY have some printed comics to give away or sell--the business cards were a wonderful idea). As it was, I managed to sell a few of my mini drawings, which I thought was neat since I hadn't intended to sell anything at SPACE and only brought my little box of mini drawings on a whim.

"The Boys" and "injury 1," examples of my tiny drawings. These are both about 2" x 2"--the image on your screen is presumably larger than the actual physical drawing. These are not the ones I sold, I have those scanned and hidden in a folder somewhere, eventually I'll find them and post them as well.

Along with the tiny drawings I had my final comic (featured in an older post) and some doodles and things from my advanced drawing class up. And I had my advanced drawing sketchbooks out. I scanned one of them, below are some of the pages.

These are not quite comics, I think, but I brought them along anyway. I have two more, which I will share later (there must be a faster way to scan them, sigh). I'm still working with the screen, and having multiple windows open (remember my photobooth self-portrait drawing), but in a less literal sense. And I get to make my own books by hand, which is always really fun.

I'll post tomorrow with a list of people I met/ got comics from, and with more pictures of the actual event (and of Columbus, we saw some sights that really cannot be described adequately in words). One last thing before I go, though... Gordon McAlpin of Multiplex was there, and I'm afraid I fangirled a little at his table for a while. Multiplex has great art AND great storytelling, definitely check it out.

SPE Atlanta

That's two road trips down, one to go. Thank goodness the next one is only two hours, I don't know if I could handle another all-night drive.

I don't have too many pictures from the actual conference, but I have plenty of the city of Atlanta and the St. Patrick's Day parade, and I still have some from New York I want to post, so those will be at the bottom of this, in that order.

I went to a slew of lectures, some more helpful than others (the one on color balancing was not so helpful, the keynote speaker the first night was super-interesting, etc). I got my most current work (the YouTube stills) reviewed by three separate reviewers--two professors and a practicing artist--and the feedback I got was mildly helpful. The last reviewer was the most enthusiastic, his names was Jamason Chen, he is a photojournalism professor from Loyola. He gave me a good many ideas for presentation, and we even got to talk a little about the concept behind the whole thing, which I didn't really do with the others.

As for the demos and workshops... I kind of already knew most of what was going on. The one lady demonstrating Adobe products was really entertaining though, so I didn't mind watching her tutorial on how to combine still and moving images in Adobe Premiere.

There was a portfolio walkthrough for anyone who brought a portfolio late one night and I was surprised how much of the work was commercial/ photojournalistic in nature. There was barely any conceptual work, you really had to sniff it out in the corners. Janie Stevens, my practicum professor, was also there, and she said that the nature of the work really depends on the region the conference is held in. The 2012 conference will be in San Francisco, so there will definitely be more conceptual work there.

The Midwest conference is actually being held in Cincinnati in October, so I will most likely go to that, now that I'm a member and all.

Things I learned on this trip:
-I MUST print some business cards/ postcards
-I will forever associate skrillex with gas stations and late-night driving
-I really should develop some sort of shorthand for quick note-taking in critiques (or just learn real shorthand)
-Lecturers really should be screened before being chosen as keynote speakers
-In relation to that, if I ever am to give a speech, I will not READ from a SCRIPT. I will talk like a human being
-I am slap-happy when tired, I don't need alcohol to act ridiculous
-TIP: hit up free sample tables several times
-People don't shake hands so often, it seems, but a firm one is always best if called for--no jellyfish hands
-Southerners really ARE that friendly! Holy crackers!
-Atlanta has like 100 streets all named some iteration of "Peachtree"
-Atlanta is skinny but super-long--we tried walking that first day. Baaad idea

This weeks is finals week, I have two critiques and a paper due, but other than that... I now have time to clean and organize my room, which is something that has needed doing since the beginning of the quarter. Ha.

SPE Atlanta photos:

Laura Fisher checks her email at the conference hotel (check out her iPhone photos on her blog).

Kilts are pretty much awesome.

Knights! On horses!

The flatiron building. Same name, different city.

From left to right: Janie Stevens, Danielle Koval, Jacob Riddle, Caitlin Robinson, Laura Fisher.

So I did.

Fancy-dan men's shoes.

All the free film I got: some 100 TMAX, one 120 color film, one fujichrome slide film, some VC and NC Kodak Portra... awesome.

NYC photos:

Oh, hey there, other flatiron building.

Awesome installation at the Met by Katrin Sigurdadottir.

The Armory and other circuses (NEW YORK)

I'm back from New York. I have slept very little and have yet to upload some of my photos, but I wanted to post just to confirm that I am indeed alive and kicking. I am getting together a portfolio of my YouTube work for SPE in Atlanta later this week, and I have a series of eight drawings that I did while in New York about the trip that I want to scan and put up eventually.

Unfortunately, I have work to do involving writing an essay and unpacking my bags (we got in at 6 am, I dumped everything and slept two hours so I could make it to class and not pass out), so I will leave you with some of my favorite images from the MoMA and the Armory Show (the first two days in NYC).