Art week wrap-up!

Last week was Art Week in Boston, with tons of official and unofficial events. For me, it was more of a photo week, and I learned and saw a lot!

It started with the Entree to Boston Arts party hosted by ONEin3 Boston, an organization that focuses on the city's younger residents. Major art organizations had representatives there to answer questions, give away offers, and explain why their events are awesome. As someone who works at a museum, it was nice to meet other art employees as well and network a bit. We came away from the party with a solid list of must-see events. Here are a few of our upcoming plans:

See Smart People and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner with the Huntington Theatre Company thanks to discounted tickets for the under 35 crew (complete with after party).
Have a swanky night out at Third Thursdays at the Gardner Museum. I've been looking forward to seeing the new fashion exhibition of Carla Fernández.
Score $10 tickets to any Arts Emerson show just by calling the same-day at 10am!
Finally see the legendary Boston Gay Men's Chorus during Pride Week.
Start counting the days to Boston Ballet's performance of Swan Lake in fall.

Moving on, the focus shifted to photography. The fourth annual Flash Forward Festival mainly took place over the weekend, but a great pre-event was held by the Boreal Colletctive, an impressive group of photographers out of Canada. Their work is mostly photojournalistic, but they have a range of jobs and the photos they shared were all from their personal projects. What made the event stand out was the format: each photographer showed 20 photos, for only 20 seconds each, while providing some narrative and context. It was a great way to sample their work and see a lot of amazing photos. I especially loved the work of Ian Willms.

The rest of the festival is made up of an array of exhibitions throughout Boston (most still ongoing) and two-days of lectures and panels. I attended all three on Saturday and really enjoyed the presentations by Sadie Quarrier, Senior Photo Editor at National Geographic (hello dream job) and Stacey Baker, Associate Photo Editor at the New York Times Magazine. Both were talking about the influence of multimedia and cell phone cameras on their publications, and showed great feature stories and projects. I think I was most inspired that they were women in high-up photo and editing positions, which is not often the case. They didn't have normal career paths (neither started as photographers) and they worked their way up without really having an ultimate goal position. It was nice to hear I'm not already five years behind.

From Sadie, check out the amazing and immersive multimedia projects on the Nat Geo website. They are true feats of photo technology, logistics, design and talent. The most interesting was on Serengeti Lions and a great resource is the library of video interviews with their staff photographers.

From Stacey Baker, take to heart that the NYTimes Magazine is seriously using Instagram to find photographers and images for their stories. They still hire and commission photographers in the traditional sense, but they're expanding how they look at images and building the visual side to their stories. Her Instagram feed is a fun project on the legs of New York (must see to understand) and the Photo Director Kathy Ryan has beautiful photos from around the magazine's offices.

The last panel was about long-term projects (really long term, as in 5+ years), and while this isn't really what I'm doing at the moment, it was a good reminder that you don't have to finish something right away for it to be good or for you to be doing something important. It's ok to let it change and expand over time. I thought of longer projects as something you needed funding for or a different job (still debatable), but these photographers have made it work around their other responsibilities. Maybe I'll find one or maybe I'm already working on one without realizing it!

Many exhibitions are still open, so go and see photos at the PRC, Griffin Museum and great outdoor installations on the Greenway.

Sneak peak!

I put the final touches on my piece for the April UForge show today. The pegboard arrived in perfect condition and looks great. I printed my photos this week thanks to the lab at Aviary Gallery in JP. It took a lot of searching, but I finally found super strong magnets too. I'll be dropping this off tomorrow - save the date for the opening on Thursday, April 3!

Read more about the idea behind this piece here.

Work in progress

I’m simultaneously working on three different gallery submissions, so it’s been a busy few weeks! But the main focus has been the April show at UForge Gallery called “Decon/Recon.” The gallery’s website about the show describes it this way:

“It is an old adage that the only constant is change itself, a fact perhaps seen most clearly in shifts in urban spaces as buildings are torn down and replaced or renovated. The plot of land remains the same but its appearance is changed, just as old materials may be repurposed for new uses.”

With that in mind, I headed over to one of my favorite areas in my neighborhood, the SoWa district. It is full of old warehouses and brick factories that have been repurposed for mostly artistic spaces (lofts, galleries, restaurants, open markets). I decided to focus on roughly one block, and try to take photos that fulfilled a different adage: “something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.” I looked for an old building in its original form; new or more modern architecture; something that has been re-used for an entirely new purpose; and something rundown, or looking a little “blue” in comparison to its neighbors. The final piece in the show will contain these four photos.

I also decided to forgo the frame this time and flesh out an idea I’ve been mulling for a while. I’ve thought that a lot of my photos of industrial and urban spaces would be better presented with a display format that is itself more industrial. I’ve also had the idea of creating a modular system, where different size photos can be interchanged and displayed together. So I ordered some metal pegboard to use as a background and mount for these photos. We’ll see how it goes when it arrives…

Keep a look out for more updates, but here’s one of the photos going into the show:

New show in April!

I've joined the group art show Decon/Recon at UFORGE Gallery, which will be on view in April. UFORGE is a great gallery in Jamaica Plain that works to promote new artists through their group assignment shows. There's no jury, so it's a first come, first serve process that makes it easier to get into the gallery scene. As they say in their mission, it was founded with "the belief that everyone has the right to show their creativity." You just have to submit an artwork based on the designated month's theme (a perfect match for me!).

I was part of their Grayscale show last year and really enjoyed the experience. The opening is always on the first Thursday of the month to coincide with JP's First Thursday Art Stroll. It's become really popular and makes for a fun and busy evening.

I'm working on a new photo piece specifically for this show, so stay tuned for more about that process and for details on the opening reception!

Source: http://www.uforgegallery.com/