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.