Fall line up... Artist at work!

I have a couple of things going on to open up my motivation for good work this coming fall. I start at Barry Friedman Ltd after Labor Day, and I have at least three exhibits of my work lined up for the fall (with hopefully more to come). I'm heavily involved in my Tik-Tok of Oz and World Trade Center series and keep coming up with some exciting results --so I expect more to come from the muses.

Photolust at Photo Center NW in Seattle is an an annual auction held to raise funds for this great organization. I was able to donate my piece for the Miniatures Show to coincide with the live auction. I was able to contribute due to my good friend Rafael's involvement with the organization and the auction itself. My piece, First Window was created in 2007, the edition of 5 silver gelatin 8 x10 contact prints from the 4x5 negative were printed in July of 2010. The edges of the negative have been burned out.

My piece Dorothy Leaving [Oz] was accepted to be a part of Psycopomp! group art show at Curious Matter in Downtown Jersey City. Each of the 18 prints were made consecutively in the darkroom, paper contact printed from the image that came before it, resulting in an end result of a harmonious grey, a reference to the many times the word 'grey' is used in the first few pages of the original novel by L. Frank Baum, as well as a return to the grey of Kansas, and the slow death of the image itself.

I have the Jersey City Artists Studio Tour coming up in the beginning of October. I'll be showing at least one new piece from Tik-Tok, and Conversations With Dan McNulty in Jersey City, to promote possible sales of my newly published book on the full series... the book includes full maps and pinpoint locations to each image triptych in the series. I don't feel that blurb books are too easy to sell widely, but Jersey City residents are usually very receptive to this project and really love to see it.

TOTALLY TOP SECRET: New photo/video series: "Tik Tok"

Tik Tok was conceived of not too long after Conversations With Dan McNulty in Jersey City.

The long title of this project would be:

Tik-Tok; Patent Double-Action, Extra-Responsive, Thought-Creating, Perfect-Talking | M E C H A N I C A L M A N | Fitted with our Special Clock-Work Attachment. Thinks, Speaks, Acts, and Does Everything But Live.

The honest truth: living as a photographer has not helped me any more or any less at dealing with major life changing experiences. In fact, the very act of photographing something removes the photographer from being in completely direct contact with the subject. I started to photograph and create images after my father died in 2002. Most of my work was a direct response to this event, and things surrounding studies of death and bereavement. I did not know it then, but retrospectively I would feel that my images were a facade of a past that never really existed. The real moment in time had already gone, and I could not ever get that picture. Until now.

The images will be either silver gelatin prints or c-prints (haven't decided that either), framed 16x20. The videos will be housed behind the wall of each photograph, each set of photos and videos will be housed in it's own coffin-like wooden wall structure.

The Room

Dancing in Reflections

The black and white photographs are meant to be read as 'titles' for the triptych videos posted below them. At this point, I am still not sure whether the titles The Room andDancing in Reflections will be used.

more World Trade Center series image updates

Hard Hats series:

Fence/Pedestrian series:

Underground WTC series:

Photographers series:

Atmosphere at WTC:

Down on Skid Row...

My cousin Brittany LeFante has been doing musical theater for a while now, associated with Saint John Vianney High School in New Jersey. As of recent, she has been working with their alumni production team in the summers. This summer, the cast of characters came together to perform the unmistakable musical, Little Shop of Horrors. I brought my 35mm loaded with b/w for the occasion.

Brit

Afterwards, we went back to my cousin Diane and Raymond's for an impromptu gathering to celebrate my Aunt Jeannie's __ th Birthday.