Saturday, October 10, 2009

Courtney Smyth 10/10/09

We just got home from Chalk It Up. That was out art event of the weekend. My son's 8th grade art class rented a square down there. I saw some really awesome chalk drawings today. I even saw Lupe chalking it up! I love to see so much excitement surrounding these kinds of events! The kids (and adults) had a great time!

For my blog, I looked up one of the photographers that was vying for the job that Libby got. Her name is Christine Shank. What she has on her website is called the Interior Series. She creates small dioramas of domestic scenes after a traumatic event. She makes the viewpoint so that the viewer is like a voyeur. She builds these sets, then photographs with a 4x5 camera. She prints in color to a size of 24x30, and displays them in shadow box frames. The titles are sort of ambiguous, to allow the viewer to come to their own conclusions. The photos are amazing. The tiny details of the dioramas are perfectly arranged. Each image and it's strange point of view draw you in. It makes you want to back away to see if maybe on the other side of the wall is more information. It makes you want to know more. She uses strong shadows and a soft focus in the foreground with a sharper focus in the back. These choices also help to draw the viewer in. The way she titles her pieces really forces the viewer to decide what happened in the scene. I imagine these images are even more amazing up close. I wish I had been able to see them when she gave her talk last semester. Here's a link to her website.

2 comments:

  1. www.christineshank.com
    Sorry...the blog page wouldn't let me add the link. Courtney

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  2. Christine's work is great! She is a friend of mine through SPE and I fell in love with her images prior to meeting her. Go check them out for sure. Actually, you could look up any number of SPEers and find amazing photos. I should just post a list of people and you guys can go from there.
    Libby

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