Joe Kelly Obenhaus, 2004, Austin, TX

I just found out that my friend Joe K. passed away two days ago. It upset me more than I anticipated. He developed Alzheimer’s Disease a few years back, and was already having memory problems when I worked with him at the Texas House of Representatives, so I can’t say I was completely surprised to hear of his passing. Still, I immediately felt guilty I didn’t seek him out over the last couple of years. It’s probably been 3 or 4 years since I last saw him. He was such a great little buddy. I’ll miss him a lot.

I just got back from 4 days in Los Angeles for the annual College Art Association conference. For the uninitiated, College Art Association is the professional organization for those interested, specifically, in teaching art in higher education. However, CAA basically an art historian love fest.

I’ve now attended three CAA conferences in a row (NYC 2007, DFW 08, LA 09), and I can say without question that they are a monster waste of time for the vast majority of working artists. Sure, they have the career fair, which is essentially a big room full of tables and booths, where you either interview or simply drop off packets with the few schools who decide to send ambassadors. But without an interview lined up long before the conference, it just doesn’t seem to make much sense to make the trek to one of apparently only 4 major cities, UNLESS you are going to take in the sights of that town. This was definitely the case for me in NYC and LA. Dallas, being in my home state, was more of a chance to expose my friends from grad school to the great state of Texas. Austin turned out to be the highlight of our trip, however.

Anyway, back to why CAA is, well, less than impressive for artists (to be kind). I’ve TRIED to sit through lectures, which seriously amount to nothing more than series of truly boring art historians reading (DIRECTLY FROM) their paper on the most uninteresting of subjects. Even when the topics seem like they could be interesting, the presenters almost always fail to deliver.

This year, I didn’t even try to attend the lectures, with the exception of those geared towards those of us just starting out in our careers. It was fairly interesting, except like all CAA lectures, this round table went on too long by about 30 minutes. Well, I say that… we left after an hour.

As a photographer/photo educator, I’m fortunate enough to have a MUCH better organization in place to take care of my need for community. That’s SPE (Society for Photographic Education), and the annual conference happens at the end of this month in Dallas. Last year was Denver, and though I went alone, I actually made friends… something that seems next to impossible at CAA for a visual artist. Even though SPE is not necessarily an official professional organization (and therefore, far fewer jobs are posted on its web site), it appears to be a great way to network. I can’t wait for the conference.

Oh, and I shouldn’t close without mentioning a few quick points to those still considering attending CAA. If you go next year, DO NOT PAY FOR THE CONFERENCE. Only pay for your membership, as that is what gets you in to the job fair. The rest of it is a waste of money. I’m sorry to say I’ve paid for the conference, and when I realized that it was unnecessary, they refused to refund. So join me in never, EVER paying for the conference again. It’s just not worth your money. (Join SPE instead, photographers!)

=)

The opening of an installation at the University of Chicago Renaissance Society.

Y’know, the more art I see, the more I realize how little of it interests me. There are only three types of work that tend to catch my attention these days (with rare exception): photography (naturally), video and installation art. Video has the ability to draw you in, often creating a package that makes you think what’s happening on screen is (or could be) real. But an installation can actually do it. Transforming a space, even into something normal but different, can often have such a jarring effect as to make the viewer question what’s real about the space and what isn’t.

I know this isn’t always the primary role of installation art, but many times it’s what I find most intriguing. Sometimes sculptures will embrace this transportational quality. I saw a show a few weeks back when my friend Eric Hancock was in town. The artist had created some type of treehouse in the clouds (although the whole thing looked eerily like a mushroom cloud), and even though I couldn’t climb in it, the scale made me feel like I could have. I instantly forgot that I was standing in a gallery, just looking at a piece of art. This doesn’t happen to me so much with paintings (or photography for that matter).

That’s probably not the best way to judge art, but it’s at least caused me to consider different ways of art-making.

I’m here in Milwaukee at the 2nd Annual Coalition for Photographic Arts Juried Exhibition. I didn’t even know about the show until today when Daniel Shea (a photographer I literally met for the first time this morning) told me about it, and offered me a ride. It’s been a great show, and I’ll be posting a video on photoawesome from it soon.

On my ride home from work. Just the way I like it: empty.

Now that I have wordpress on my phone, I think I’ll use it to post here more regularly. More semi-low-res photos to come.

We attended our first openings of the fall gallery season tonight, which was a lot of fun. It wouldn’t have been so, had our friends Katie and Eric not been there. They both left Atlanta/SCAD the same time we did, only Katie is now attending SAIC for her MFA, and Eric is racking up residencies and stuff left and right. I’m jealous of both. But we’re all here in a pretty great city, and it was a lively art scene tonight. Tons of people everywhere.

I’ve been teaching for three weeks now, and the possibility of another class at another school is possibly on the horizon. Steve (Aishman) always said they’d contact you at the last minute, and that advice (along with much other) has held true. So far the teaching has been incredibly rewarding. It’s weird, at times, to be completely in charge of the direction of a course. Not just the planning and syllabus and all that, but the simple direction day to day. I’ve been writing extensive notes about every single class meeting on the train home that evening, and I think that’s really helped keep me on track.

As a matter of fact, a student from another class was in the lab the other day, and when I asked her, she said that they were doing the exact same thing in her class that we were. It felt good to know we were on track.

The weather in this part of the country right now is phenomenal. It’s actually been a bit chilly lately (68°F high), but prior to that, it was around 90°F rarely, and generally in the mid to low 80s. I look forward to the snow for now, but I think I’ll live to regret those words.

Funny thing happened today. I was out driving around Georgia shooting with my new Hasselblad. Oh, I didn’t mention that? I’ll come back to it. Anyway, I was on this two lane road in Conyers, Georgia, and I realized that I’d been there before. I came to this big abandoned entry/gate to what used to be a ranch of some type, and I parked my truck to take a picture. As I was framing things up, this older gentleman drove up in one of those ATV/small truck vehicle things and asked me if I’d like a ride up to the property. It wasn’t his, but he new the owners and had spent a lot of time up there.

He showed me around and let me get out and take pictures, then took me over to his own property, introduced me to his longhorns, two donkeys and goat, who was actually as affectionate as my dogs. Turns out Mr. Martin is actually from Alamo, Texas, down in the valley (not to be confused with San Antonio, where The Alamo resides), but he left Texas in 1944. He filled me in on quite a bit of Texas history; actually, we talked mostly about Texas.

I’ll be developing the film soon, and hopefully have some usable shots. Until I get my new light meter, I’ll be metering with my Digital Rebel, which is essentially what this shot is… a metering shot before I took his portrait with the Hasselblad. But I think it’s nice, and fortunately I shot it in RAW.

So about the Hasselblad. I applied for a Graduate PLUS loan, mostly for the Hasselblad, but also for some other stuff. It finally came in recently, and I won an auction on eBay for a full Hasselblad 500C/M outfit, complete with an 80mm CF lens, non-metered 45 degree prism and two A12 film backs. I ended up spending a few hundred dollars less than I had planned, and so with the additional money, I’m going to buy a top of the line Sekonic light meter. No more metering with a digital camera. I also bought a great Canon bag for everything tonight at Best Buy, which is really solid. AND I’ve begun ordering all of the chemistry for wet-plate collodion. It’s an exciting time.

Another image from the roof for a project.

From something in my Digital Craft class. School’s out ’til January.

Some experimentation from the other night, using the Canon 5D and ringlight. (That’s my new Dr. Pepper shirt. Are you a Pepper?)

You can see it in B&W as well.

This was the tank that could’ve passed as a giant Imax screen the way it was presented. It was pretty impressive.

Taken at the Georgia Aquarium, which cost WAY too much to enter.

I love my darkroom. It took two years, but when we moved I had a chance to set it up again, and I took the time to lay it out like I wanted. Granted, it’s a bit of a mess right now, but the extra enlarger is a great place to put my paper box while I’m printing.

This little collage was actually pretty fun to throw together. So sloppy and easy. I gotta’ admit, I just threw it together to let you know I’m still alive. I have a scanner, but what I really need is a copy stand so I can just shoot digital images of the big prints I’ve been making.

It’s the drive-in outside of Midland. I took some pictures of this with my Graflex 6×9 in B&W, so I hope they turn out better.

This is one of only a few images I’ll be posting from this past weekend. I took a road trip to the area where I was born… a place I haven’t even visited in about 13 years.

I was born in Odessa, Texas, which is very much in West Texas… the desert, for most of you. It had an oil-driven economy, and that’s why my family was there. My dad was transferred to Nigeria (in Africa) in 1988, and it was at that point that my mom, brother and I moved to my parents’ home town or Orange, where I spent the rest of my youth.

I stayed in Midland during this trip, with my kindergarten teacher and her husband. But I drove the 20 miles over to Odessa a couple of times to see the place I had so many memories of. I took many pictures, but they were mostly digital. This particular one was shot in RAW mode, so I at least had that in mind for certain shots I figured I would post here. More information about my trip will be posted soon at CrazyWalker.

As this place has obviously been a bit devoid of new photos lately, I thought I’d do what most others do at this point: post an old photo that I probably wouldn’t have posted otherwise. This is just a shot where Robert was playing around before the final 4×5 shot, seen previously on this photo blog.

Oh how I wish I didn’t have to rent a 17-35mm lens just to get this wide angle on a digital SLR.

See the previous entry for details (and color!).