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.

Project Process 2/16/16 Artists statement 2.0

I reworked my artists statement after talking with Julie and Zane and concentrating more on the three core ideas of subject, content, and form.

This work is a collection of photographs of a colony of alley cats. I hope to portray their life as accurately as possible and through them to bring light to the lives of all feral cats. The reality that they are all individuals, and that they want the same things we do: food, security, and affection. There are five cats in the main family, Flip, Flop, Duke, Duchess, and Two Face Kitty. There are also a few other characters that wander in and out of the story. I hope this book will show not only the humanity, but also the humor of the lives of these complex creatures.

The point of this book is to change the idea of what an alley cat is. There is a stereotype of a mangy scrappy animal that is oftentimes mean or vicious. The huge misconception is that feral cats are diseased, cause noise, and should be scared away. In reality colony cats live just as long and are just as healthy as house cats. The cats in this book are the exact opposite of the negative stereotypes about feral cats. They are clean, friendly, and have been fixed. A major aesthetic influence on my work was the book Abandoned America: The Age of Consequence by Matthew Christopher My setting is an abandoned house and I have drawn many parallels between his work and mine. I find the pealing paint and rusting metal offsets the softness of the cats very poignantly, speaking on how like their house they have been forgotten. Another influence was Ernie: A Photographers Memoir by Tony Mendoza.  The idea of photographing a cat, in a thousand different ways, showing the humor and the seriousness in the life of an animal, and in that way, revealing those aspects in ourselves really spoke to me. 

This work is a collection of photographs taken over the span of a year detailing the lives of the cats who live at 32 Parkwood Avenue. The photographs are compiled into a book arranged chronologically by month. Because my work is focused on portraying the very real beauty of these cats all of the pictures are completely unedited. They are full color, and un-cropped, exactly as I took them. I was not, however, worried about disturbing the environment of the cats. As their neighbor I feel I am inherently part of their environment and so my actions are not disruptive to the truth of the photographs.

Book Summary

A Year in the Alley chronicles the lives of a family of alley cats from one spring to the next. This book hopes to show not only the humanity, but also the humor of the lives of these complex creatures. In the hope that maybe the next time you see a stray cat, it won't be in the same way you did before.

First One on One Reflection

I met with Julie and Zane today to talk about my project for the first time. The meeting basically covered what I already knew. I need to really condense my concept and work on articulating why I am doing what I am doing. I did get some good leads on sources I can research to help me write text. One is the Hemingway cats on Key West. The other is the the book Ernie, by Tony Mendoza. I am also looking into getting the book The Cats of Kittyville by Bob Somerville. 

In the next couple weeks I really need to work on developing my text for the book as well as my artist statement and concept. 

Zanele Muholi artist lecture response at Cleveland Museum of Art

Zanele Muholi is a LGBTI activist artist working specifically in South Africa. Her work deals with the violence faced by the LGBTI community even though South Africa has legal gay marriage. She describes her work as creating a visual archive of the South African Gay community, the only archive before this was homicide reports after hate crimes claimed members of the community. Her work is Muholi's way of taking back their history and claiming it again. Her work portrays mostly lesbians of color, on their terms, not as a news headline. She has created several collections of work hi lighting, lesbians, lesbian couples, and transgender women in South Africa. She describes her subjects not as subjects but as participants, they actively work with her in the creation of her art.

John Newman and Adrianna Campbell artist talk response and reflection

This artist talk had a little bit of a different format than the others before, John Newman was interviewed in a way by Adrianna Campbell, an expert in American art. John Newman described his training as unconventional, he started out wanting to be a poet. Something that he said about his work that really spoke to me is that "binary relationships aren't working anymore... everything is multiplicity" and that he was making art in that multiplicity. That there was not simply male or female, painting or sculpture, that there were in betweens. He said that he is "trying to make something I've never seen before" and that is what drives his current work. 

First Photoshoot of February

The lighting this afternoon was perfect so I got in the first shoot of the month.
These are a few hi lights from the shoot, including a photo I've been trying to get for six months: The in the den shot.

Artist Presentation Response: Sophie Knee

Sophie describes her work as being informed by things she sees in her everyday life. She will see a form she likes, snap a picture to remember it, and then use that picture to inspire her work. She says "I make art about the things around me" she doesn't have some long bullshit philosophy or the idea that her inspiration is from something really profound and I really enjoy that about her work. It is very down to earth and concrete. She works in viscosity monotypes to produce multiple colors in, one printing, she describes the way she creates the work as an intersection of printmaking and painting. I really enjoy the subjects of her work, most of them are animals, and most of those are cats, which really fit well with my own work for this project. Her focus on the shape of the animal is also very important to me and it was inspiring to see someone using it in a different way.

Project Process: First Draft Artist Statement 1/29/16

This work is a collection of photographs taken over the coarse of a year of a colony of alley cats. I hope to portray their life as accurately as possible and to bring light to the lives of all feral cats. The reality that they are all individuals, and that they want the same things we do: food, security, and affection.

My hope is to change the idea of what an alley cat is. There is a stereotype of a mangy scrappy animal that is oftentimes mean or vicious. An ugly scavenger, or almost a pest, likes city rats, or pigeons. There is a huge misconception that feral cats are diseased, sick, and should be scared away or put down to reduce the cat population. The cats in this book are the exact opposite of these stereotypes. These cats are friendly to their human neighbors, and actually help prevent disease, by keeping the rodent population in check.

            A major influence on my work was the book Abandoned America: The Age of Consequence by Matthew Christopher. It is a photo book highlighting the decaying places in America, and it has been a huge aesthetic influence on my work for this book. My setting is an abandoned house and I have drawn many parallels between his work and mine. I find the pealing paint and rusting metal offsets the softness of the cats very poignantly, speaking on how like their house they have been forgotten.

Another influence was Ernie: A Photographers Memoir by Tony Mendoza.  The idea of photographing a cat, in a thousand different ways, showing the humor and the seriousness in the life of an animal, and in that way, revealing those aspects in ourselves really spoke to me.  

Denny Griffith artist talk response

Denny described his work as coming to a head in the last year to create his encaustic on panel work. He describes his work in a way that makes it seem to have a life of its own, that it wants things, it grows. All his works are so vibrant even though much of the work is pastel, and so happy, even though he was very sick. All his words he used to describe his artwork are so positive and light, he asserts that he didn't want these to be about dying, that they are about living. All these works are about fun, and happiness, and life and to me that is very telling about Denny and his personality. 

Peter Schjeldahl Lecture Reflection

Peter Schjeldahl had the unique position of speaking at an art school as an art critic. He is an art critic for the New Yorker and has worked as an art critic there since 1998. Schjeldahl said he believes that his writing, and all art, is supposed to enhance life just a little between the cradle and the grave. His talk was a little all over the place, but so much of it was also very profound. Something he said about his profession was that "art criticism should be an ongoing open discussion of our aesthetic experience". I had never thought about art criticism that way before and I don't think I will be able to think of it the same way again. Another thing that struck me was when he said that art doesn't cure cancer, it doesn't really change anything, it just makes life a little more bearable; that maybe you see a piece of art that moves you and you think "maybe I'll go on living another day". There was so much inspiration, and good material in this talk that I couldn't write it all down, his view of art was wonderful and I feel very privileged I got to hear him speak about it. I hope that I can one day say anything half as profound as everything in this talk.

This blog will hi-light the process of creating and publishing a photo book for my honors capstone.