FLOW Gallery Night show

I have a gallery show coming up! The lovely ladies of Guildess and I are hosting FLOW, a Gallery Night exhibition featuring the work of diverse Milwaukee artists with the underlying theme of water. 25% of the show's profits will be donated to the Great Lakes WATER Institute!

(p.s. I designed the post card!)

RedLine Milwaukee

I am finding it harder to keep up with my readings and analytical thought these days. Work has gotten the best of me. With only 2 months left in my AmeriCorps term, I am desperately trying to tie up all loose ends.

Today, we visited RedLine Milwaukee with Club members from the Pieper-Hillside Boys & Girls Club. RedLine Milwaukee is a "space that encourages artists and visitors alike to enter a realm where inspiration remains absolutely unchecked, to bring art and beauty to the surrounding neighborhood and community by incorporating as many environmentally friendly nuances as possible."

A few photographs from today's tour...




RedLine Milwaukee programs: http://www.redlineartmke.org/programs.htm

Soft focus

Today was successful and inspiring.

I had a wonderful evening of photography programming at the Daniels-Mardak Boys & Girls Club. We explored old film cameras and compared them to digital point and shoot and SLR cameras! I broke down photography into a few categories: portrait, documentary, snapshot, and narrative based on the four books I brought. This introduced the Club members to different ways of seeing the world and how photography can be incorporated into daily life. Then, we went on a photo adventure around the club so I could get a better feel for their skill levels and interests.

The drive home was a bit scary because of dense fog, but it did remind me of Bill Jacobson's photography work. He is known mostly for his soft focus photographs of people and New York City. What really strikes me are the portraits because they suggest foggy or lost memories.

Wrapping up...

I am officially done with Secure the Shadow and there are a few final remarks I would like to make about it. First, it introduced me to a lot of new, fascinating topics that I will continue to take interest in. These include: tombstones inlaid with photographs, mourning jewelry, the replacement of photographs with family videos, and an overall interest in the lost art of post mortem photography. Before this book, I didn't really know the act of photographing the dead was a widely accepted practice during the 19th century, let alone one that could make someone money. With this newly acquired knowledge, I believe I have a better understanding for the medium I love so dearly and perhaps even why photography and death are so closely related.

Moving on, I am now in the midst of exploring the catalogue in conjunction with the exhibition "The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult," held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2005. This exhibition highlights "what the first spirit photographs revealed of attitudes and beliefs in an America traumatized by the civil war." Interestingly enough, this was taking place around the same time as post mortem photography. I am excited to draw connections between the two!

I will leave you with an image of Staveley Bulford, who built an oversized camera that he and another person could enter, in hopes of observing the mystery of capturing an image of a supernatural being.