Taft Nicholson Artist Residency

Self Portrait 

Self Portrait 

A mere five hour drive from Salt Lake City, two of my peers and I took a road trip to join some fellow artists from the University of Utah to spend a couple weeks at the Taft Nicholson Artist Residency in Centennial Valley, Montana. It was a positive and energizing experience that left me feeling rejuvenated and creatively fulfilled.

Real Life Benefits:

  • Fresh Montana air and an open landscape for creative thinking.
  • Unplug! No internet or cell service except for emergencies and a few phone calls to say goodnight to my one and only. 
  • Wide open spaces, trails, lakes, and mountains to explore and get inspired by.
  • Time! Day after day of endless creativity and good company.
  • Fellow students and friends to share new ideas with, and get feedback on works in progress.
  • Cyanotype alternative process. Just add sun and water! My two favorite things.
  • Early morning sunrise photoshoots - for when you can't sleep.
  • Birding! Owls, bald eagles, hawks, cranes, and more!
  • Daily group hikes - don't forget the bear spray!
  • Rooming with two awesome ladies- one made a bird coffin and the other speaks to the cows.
  • Delicious meals with the gang. Don't forget the potato donuts!
  • Evenings sharing works in progress, playing games and sharing stories.

Plates To Pixels: Intimate Alchemy - BEST OF SHOW

Intimate Alchemy

2016 ANNUAL JURIED EXHIBITION

Juried by Blue Mitchell

I would venture to warn against too great intimacy with artists as it is very seductive and a little dangerous.

–Queen Victoria

Theme: Intimate Alchemy

ADJECTIVE

  1. associated in close personal relations: an intimate friend.
  2. characterized by or involving warm friendship or a personally close or familiar association or feeling: an intimate greeting.
  3. very private; closely personal: one’s intimate affairs.
  4. characterized by or suggesting an atmosphere conducive to privacy or intimacy; warmly cozy: an intimate little café where we can relax and talk.
  5. (of an association, knowledge, understanding, etc.) arising from close personal connection or familiar experience.
  6. engaged in or characterized by sexual relations: too young to handle an intimate relationship.
  7. (of women’s clothing) worn next to the skin, under street or outer garments: a store that sells intimate apparel.
  8. detailed; deep: a more intimate analysis.
  9. showing a close union or combination of particles or elements: an intimate mixture.
  10. inmost; deep within.
  11. of, relating to, or characteristic of the inmost or essential nature; intrinsic: the intimate structure of an organism.
  12. of, relating to, or existing in the inmost depths of the mind: intimate beliefs.

NOUN

  1. an intimate friend or associate, especially a confidant.

Juror: Plates to Pixels Curator Blue Mitchell

(Born in Montana, US 1974) Blue Mitchell is an independent publisher, curator, educator, and photographer. Based in Portland, Oregon, he has been involved with many facets of the photographic arts. After Mitchell received his BFA from Oregon College of Art & Craft he started a publishing company (One Twelve Publishing) that focuses on hand-crafted photography. One Twelve’s photographic annual Diffusion is internationally distributed and respected. In 2015, One Twelve published their first monograph book Contact by large format photographer Jake Shivery. In addition to their printing endeavors, One Twelve also runs the online photographic gallery Plates to Pixels.

Source: http://platestopixels.com/blog/exhibitions...

PhotoPlace Gallery: In Celebration of Trees

Juror’s Statement:

My selections for In Celebration of Trees represent a very high diversity of tree species, settings and styles. Foremost among my criteria, each image reveals the centrality of tree-as-subject, supported by composition and legibility. Even the shortest narrative must roll from the tongue of the photo, to tell of the tree’s vitality, adaptability, steadfastness, or vulnerability and awkwardness.

In some images, the intellect and calculations of the photographer can be noticed, and in others a simple spontaneous elation from seeing light on leaves carries the message that this tree is important. These higher levels of Tree Consciousness speak well for all who participated. By nature, I tend to stay away from the infrared filtration and color enhancements, but I found the representations of apparent early photo techniques generally intriguing.

Trees are a challenging photographic subject. There are days when none appear worthy of exposure, but even so the search can be good mental conditioning for the right opportunity to appear.

Tom Zetterstrom

About the Juror:

Tom Zetterstrom’s Portraits of Trees represents the diversity and beauty of America’s forest resources. His 35-year dedication to trees imbues this endeavor with a unified artistic vision, sharpened by his very personal commitment to issues of local and global sustainability. Tom’s photographic career spans 45 years. His work as a freelance photojournalist in the ’70s and ’80s ranged from the New York Times Magazine and op-ed pages to A Day in the Life of America. His photographic eye has repeatedly responded to environmental issues over the decades. Zetterstrom’s documentary portfolios include White Russia, 1973 (in the Library of Congress archive); Faces of China, 1981(sponsored and toured by the Yale-China Association); and Man and Machine, 1973-1976. Photographs from Zettertrom’s various portfolios are represented in 40 museum collections throughout the United States.

Source: http://photoplacegallery.com/in-celebratio...

PhotoPlace Gallery: Stories and Secrets

Juror’s Statement:

Photographers most often use the camera to record the facts of the real world as seen at the moment of exposure. And the camera is a wonderful device for doing this. But when those facts are aligned to narratives or fantasies, the potential for deeper meaning is expanded. The photographs submitted for PhotoPlace Gallery’s exhibition, “Stories and Secrets,” offered an amazing variety of ways in which stories can be told with photographs. In some cases, texts were included as part of the images, but in most of the work the images themselves carried the narratives alone, sometimes in quite obvious ways, in other instances through enigmatic and mysterious suggestions.

As jurors we were faced with the difficult task of selecting work from a large body of exceptional work, and there were many deserving photographs that we wished we could have included. Alas, our job was to choose a finite number for exhibition and publication, and in the end we found ourselves most drawn to tantalizing images that told stories or whispered secrets in ways that made us want to know more. We gravitated toward images that were thoughtfully and skillfully conceived to tell subtle stories that hover on the edge of suggestiveness. Our congratulations to all of the artists who were selected, and our thanks to everyone for submitting such fascinating work.

Emma Powell and Kirsten Hoving

About the Jurors:

Mother and daughter Kirsten Hoving and Emma Powell have been working together for many years. Their most recent collaboration is Svala’s Saga, realized after extensive travel to Iceland together.

Emma Powell is an assistant professor of art at Colorado College. Powell graduated from the College of Wooster, and received her MFA in photography from Rochester Institute of Technology. Her work often examines photography’s history while incorporating historic processes and other devices within the imagery.
www.emmapowellphotography.com

Kirsten Hoving is a Charles A. Dana Professor of Art History at Middlebury College. In between writing books and articles and teaching courses about modern art and the history of photography at Middlebury College, she makes photographs. She is co-founder of PhotoPlace Gallery.
www.kirstenhovingphotographs.com

Source: http://photoplacegallery.com/stories-and-s...