Do You Know Your Visual Signature – Part 2?

So, I have been doing some work with the 50mm focal length after watching that “What is Visual Signature?” on YouTube.  See previous post for details.  I think I mentioned this before, but I use to shoot mostly at 50mm until I gradually moved away from it.  As I said in the previous post, I’ve been at 300mm for my Kinetic Ambiguity Project and 135mm for my Motion Project for a while now.  Well, I did not only experiment with 50mm, I also photographed with 1x1 aspect ratio as well.  I made some interesting self-discoveries in doing this that I will share with you on the next post.  I’ll say this though, 50mm is a proven focal point.  Still, we need to keep in mind our own visual signature.

(Designation, Objects 457 – not named at this time.)

Baltimore Museum of Art

Do you follow art news or the website artnet?  I have recently started to follow art news – it’s like a break from stories dominated by an orange dude who…  Like I said, a break from other kind of news.  I read this story about how the Baltimore Museum of Art sold some of their top dollar artwork by white guys (Andy Warhol, Franz Kline, and Robert Rauschenberg, for example) so that they could acquire some top dollar artwork by people of color and women (Jack Whitten, Amy Sherald [the artist who painted Michelle Obama's official portrait], Wangechi Mutu, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, and a bunch of others).  The personally sad thing about this was that I did not know who these, people of color and women, artist were – and I’m a studio art major.  Hell, I graduated with honors on top of that.  I felt like a dumbass and I know I’m not dumb.  I know it goes without saying but I did know of all the white guys they mentioned in the article.  So, I had to look up a few of these artists whom I did not know.  I was really flabbergasted by one artist in particular – Isaac Julien.  This dude…  Wow!  Well his website says that he is a “filmmaker and installation artist”.  But he makes photographic prints too.  And “Julien was awarded the title Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen’s birthday honors, 2017.”  So like yeah.  Well, you never stop learning.  I need to hurry up and get my stuff out there.

The images below are some early work from 2014.  I have a lot more newer images that I need to finish up the post production on but the preoccupied state of subjects in these two makes them still very relevant today.  And I like them.

MOCA Los Angeles

I am the new director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles!  Ok, not yet but I should be.  Let me tell you why.  I have leadership experience (over 20 years in the Army – I was a platoon sergeant for crying out loud!); I can handle pressure and stress (did I mention the Army thing – tours to Iraq); I’m educated (a BA in studio art and a minor in business – and I graduated with honors); I love art (see the BA in studio art thing); museums like to have older folks running things – I’ll be 56 within weeks; diversity – I’m black; need to show some love to America – I’m a #vet and you know this (from above sentence); I support the #metoo movement (I’m married to my beautiful wife who is a college professor and we have 4 daughters between us and my mama lives with us – I’m no position not to support women in all of their struggles – and again, I can handle pressure and stress); management potential (see everything above); and I really want to work in the art world – really, really want to.

So, please contact MOCA Los Angeles and let them know I’m the perfect candidate.  Really.

A Piece of Americana

Our world has had more painful moments to contend with lately.  And there is a lot more that we generally don’t know about because it hasn’t come to the national stage yet but just as painful.  My family and I have been on vacation for the last two weeks though and we still made the best of it.  There was no comfort in reading about Minnesota, Louisiana, and Dallas.  But even here in Florida, we heard about the attempted child abduction back in Victorville.  We learned about the 3 murders, including the 9-year-old boy, in San Bernardino too.  We live, work and go to school in the high desert.  Those things (and more I’m sure that did not hit the national stage) happened while we were gone but we’re heading back today.  We are in Orlando: Pulse Night Club.  We are from the Inland Empire: San Bernardino mass shooting.  Just the same, we earned a vacation and a respite from all of this pain.  This image is a parting shot of our last outing yesterday – the crowd is just random folks.  We barely made it back to the car before the downpour.  We had a lot of fun these last two weeks but the heat was a challenge.  It’s very humid here.  Truth be told, we had a good vacation but it’s time to go home.

Kinetic Ambiguity

So, before I had said, “I want to see more than what we see at the moment because more is going on that what is seen.”  Hey, that was kind of goofy and made little sense but my Kinetic Ambiguity Project is in line with the point I am trying to make.  I’m not after the “Jackson Pollock” photograph but this project works towards where I’m going.  I know, you want to see where I’m going with this, not where it came from.  You want to see that #image I’m alluding to.  Soon, but I need to mull over what I have done to help me focus a little more.

Oh, and I did a lot of this Kinetic Ambiguity Project in Las Vegas – love that place.

44th Annual Student Art Exhibition

Well, the 44^th Annual Student Art Exhibition at the Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art (RAFFMA), located on the campus of the California State University, San Bernardino, is gone forever.  There will be a 45^th but that will be for current students and I am now an alumni.  But I did manage to capture a portion of the exhibition – my stuff.  This was a tough juror too, she (AprilGreiman) rejected a lot of work.  I had tried to enter one standalone photographic print and a polyptych of ten prints from my photography.  Then I also entered two different printmaking prints.  One was a woodcut print and the other was an etching print.  None of them pleased the juror except three of the largest images of my ten piece polyptych.  So it became a triptych.  Well, at least I got something in the show, that was a plus in my book.  Enjoy.