Project Process April 13: Amazing News!!

I got my book today!! This whole process has been so amazing and it feels so wonderful to have this after a year of hard work. Because my actual project is done I now have the rest of the time to work on perfecting my powerpoint for the symposium. For the exhibition I have decided I don't want to print out photos, I want to display the actual book on a pedestal or podium because I don't want to lose the text like I would if I just printed out photos.
In the symposium I will be presenting on my process, the stories behind the cats, and some general information about feral cat colonies. I will have my book with me for the presentation so it can circulate around the room.

Progress Post April 8

This seems really scary but my book is completely done and just shipped today. To have worked on something for a whole year and to finally complete it is equal parts satisfying, terrifying, and sad. I will definitely miss working like this with the cats, I will still get to see them and play with them but it wont be the same as creating this book has been. Now the only thing left to do is to finalize my presentation for the symposium.

April 1st meeting reflection

I met with Julie this past Friday to discuss the finalization of my book. I am finished taking all the photos and I just need to order the books. Julie was critical of my layout for the starting pages of each month, she wanted me to just do text on each page. I'm not sure I like that idea, I feel like some of the pictures go with the text on those pages. I'm still worried about the text, making it the best it can be, I don't know if it is enough of a story, or if there should be more. I don't want to put a lot of text though, it is, after all, a photography book.

Progress Post 3/17/16

This week I worked a lot on getting documentation of my process as an artist for this project. 

I had my boyfriend tag along for my photoshoot and snap some pictures of my interactions with the cats.

As you can see, most of my time is not actually spent photographing, but interacting with the cats. I have also been overhauling the powerpoint after the midpoint critique. Everyone said that they wanted more process photos, and more story to the powerpoint. I have been working on talking more about the stories behind the photos. 

Mid-Point Critique Reflection

I think a lot of people don't like hard critiques, but I hate easy ones. I want to know what I'm doing wrong so I can fix it. I was on an ok track, and I think everyone liked my photo's themselves. After the critique though there are a lot of things I want to change to make it better. Everyone was very insistent I needed to put more of the story in the presentation, they wanted a way to connect to the cats. Someone suggested that I do more screenshots of the book in progress so people could see what the actual book looks like. Another point was that I should have character descriptions with my introduction page of the family. Something else I will change is putting pictures from my influences and moving the influences slide up farther in the presentation. My favorite suggestion by far is the changing of the subtitle from: "A year in the lives of the cats of 32 Parkwood Ave" to simply "The lives of the cats of 32 Parkwood Ave". I LOVE this name and I can't believe I didn't think of it myself. 

In all I really really enjoyed this critique!

Phoebe Gloeckner Artist Talk Response

Phoebe Gloeckner is a comic book artist who started out as a student of medical illustration. She has been making comics since she was a teenager. Her first works were based on her life, although she says it is not autobiographical, the character has the same experiences she had as a teenager. Gloeckner talks about her work in a very conversational way, as if she is talking one on one to a friend. I admire her conversational attitude toward presentation, I would love to do that more in my own work, I always feel very awkward talking about my work. Her most recent work is a book about a 15 year old girl from Juarez who was murdered, and her family who still have no answers. I admire her work for a cause, but I don't think I could ever do something so scary or dangerous. I will stick to my cats for now thank you. 

Critique Reflection 2/26/15

Meeting with Julie and Zane to talk about my project today was really helpful. The most important thing I need to change is the format of the book. The format I have has the book arranged by month with a picture and a little bit of text at the beginning of each month. Julie suggested it would give it a lot more visual cohesion for each chapter to start with only the text, not the picture, because the transition between months was getting lost. The other main change I am going to make is with my artist statement, I need to talk about the fact that this project is a documentary of sorts, so far that doesn't appear anywhere in my artist statement and it is a main part of my project, Whoops! I also need to condense down my WHY part of my artists statement to an essential sentence on why this matters, why I am doing it. I think I am pretty well prepared for the midpoint presentation next week, I'm actually really looking forward to the presentation, I want to get a lot of different feedback from as many people as possible.