Three more weeks. 5 books, 4 paintings, photos photos photos...so much to do.
I keep brainstorming about my capstone artist statement, and I have a feeling its going to be the shortest one they've ever seen. Three sentences? Hope thats okay.
Strange article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/arts/design/08rothenberg.html
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
my website!
it is very very very under construction because of all the organization and photoshopping that must be done...but its coming along! the name is stupid, but thats what happens when its a free website.
www.kaitlinwaterman.weebly.com
www.kaitlinwaterman.weebly.com
For weeks I have been editing my photos into separate portfolios. I have been so busy with job hunting and working on my portfolios, I have barely taken new photographs. It has taken forever to find the files, photoshop them, organize them...I'm still not done, BUT I am currently narrowing down my Capstone and I think it's going pretty well...new work and old work combined into one portfolio that is conceptually cohesive. So far I think it's these 6 (the 7th photograph of birds is a possible alternative):
Job hunting for photo jobs is almost impossible.
Job hunting for photo jobs is almost impossible.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Self Portraits
To Do/Goals:
1. Make crime scene kozo book
2. More food close ups to complete that portfolio, printed large
3. 50 photos of inside cars
Yikes
Finally going through ALL of my college photographs and organizing them...Different piles...different portfolios. So far I have 12 different categories...
1. Mom
2. Nightmarish photos
3. Airplane series
4. Formal pictures
5. Tourists, Tourism
6. Words, Signs, Buttons, Text
7. Surfaces (100 small and 25ish large glossy prints)
8. People, social interactions
9. Crime scenes
10. Windows, Reflections,
11. Food
12. Self portraits
Once I've organized them, I have to go through the files on my computer, put them together, then photoshop them (I never save the photoshopped version for some stupid reason)...Then they'll be ready to burn to a disk. I'm sure half of these photos are on my old laptop which barely works, so that'll be tricky.
This is kind of depressing...coming to an end. And I wont finish all of these portfolios before I graduate...and then what if I never finish them?
Working on a collage painting:
I also made a crime scene accordion book...not that satisfied with presenting it this way, but it fulfilled a book arts assignment...
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Thursday...
Made a test frame and test photo stretched over it...Now I'm really not sure what I want to do with them.
_______________
Reaction to Alec Soth...
I really really enjoyed his lecture. His work has progressed over the years through his methodology of choosing things he’s interested in and linking them to something else he can work on next, which relates back to the previous work. In the end, this gives his entire body of work a cohesion that many fine art photographers struggle for. Maybe it's not even that he's linking subject matter...I suppose its just the way he treats it.
The critique was a little disappointing because he was so burnt out...and most of the feedback was negative. Telling Nathan that he was doing something unintentionally interesting was kind of weird...as if saying "You dont really know what you're doing, but you're accidentally making interesting work." How did he know what his intentions were, and if your intentions are different from the viewer's perception, does that make you wrong...?
It was really nice to have a fine art photographer as a visiting artist...It seems like an impossible career, so I better start looking elsewhere. I have been so busy with painting and bookmaking...I have barely been able to devote as much time as I want to the things that I REALLY want to be doing...and NEED to be doing. Like shooting photographs I actually care about...and looking for jobs. And cooking myself meals. I've decided to go on a diet. I get really dirty looks when I tell people this because they're usually thirty pounds heavier than me...but seriously. No more fast food, no more soda...I have a new phobia of getting fat. Maybe I should photograph obese people and try to see the beauty in it, and get over my phobia...or maybe I should just stick with the diet.
_______________
Reaction to Alec Soth...
I really really enjoyed his lecture. His work has progressed over the years through his methodology of choosing things he’s interested in and linking them to something else he can work on next, which relates back to the previous work. In the end, this gives his entire body of work a cohesion that many fine art photographers struggle for. Maybe it's not even that he's linking subject matter...I suppose its just the way he treats it.
The critique was a little disappointing because he was so burnt out...and most of the feedback was negative. Telling Nathan that he was doing something unintentionally interesting was kind of weird...as if saying "You dont really know what you're doing, but you're accidentally making interesting work." How did he know what his intentions were, and if your intentions are different from the viewer's perception, does that make you wrong...?
It was really nice to have a fine art photographer as a visiting artist...It seems like an impossible career, so I better start looking elsewhere. I have been so busy with painting and bookmaking...I have barely been able to devote as much time as I want to the things that I REALLY want to be doing...and NEED to be doing. Like shooting photographs I actually care about...and looking for jobs. And cooking myself meals. I've decided to go on a diet. I get really dirty looks when I tell people this because they're usually thirty pounds heavier than me...but seriously. No more fast food, no more soda...I have a new phobia of getting fat. Maybe I should photograph obese people and try to see the beauty in it, and get over my phobia...or maybe I should just stick with the diet.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Wednesday
I want to stretch photos printed on fabric or kozo paper over a wood frame. Is this possible?...I guess I'll just have to test it.
I liked the short video on Jeff Wall. I hate his photo "The Flooded Grave," but I really like basically every other photo of his. I tend to like photos that are cinematic, dramatic, staged - and his are also a complete lie with his method of digital manipulation...constructing an image on a computer, like painters construct an image on canvas...which challenges the history of photography as documentary and truthful. His photos are somewhere between painting and photo collage, with subjects staged in normal and abnormal cinematic moments...always nightmarish.
Time to go print.
I liked the short video on Jeff Wall. I hate his photo "The Flooded Grave," but I really like basically every other photo of his. I tend to like photos that are cinematic, dramatic, staged - and his are also a complete lie with his method of digital manipulation...constructing an image on a computer, like painters construct an image on canvas...which challenges the history of photography as documentary and truthful. His photos are somewhere between painting and photo collage, with subjects staged in normal and abnormal cinematic moments...always nightmarish.
Time to go print.
Monday, February 1, 2010
In progress
More photos inside cars:
_________________________________
Where Amber Harris' body was found (age 12):
Where Thomas Hunter and the family's housekeeper Shirlee Sherman were murdered (Ages 11 and 57):
_________________________________
Where Amber Harris' body was found (age 12):
Where Thomas Hunter and the family's housekeeper Shirlee Sherman were murdered (Ages 11 and 57):
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Tuesday
What a day. Some girl stole one of my stencils in Book Arts and used it. Then, she told me she'd give it back later and never did.
Also - Its pretty hard to incorporate my own photos into these projects we're doing so far, but maybe soon I will be able to. I was hoping to make FIVE photo books at the end of the semester when we finally have free reign over the projects...but now Karen announced she wants us to work with some Lincoln poets and create imagery for their poems. I would rather do my own thing, and I told her that. She didnt seem to care.
Anyway.
Inside someone's car:
Also - Its pretty hard to incorporate my own photos into these projects we're doing so far, but maybe soon I will be able to. I was hoping to make FIVE photo books at the end of the semester when we finally have free reign over the projects...but now Karen announced she wants us to work with some Lincoln poets and create imagery for their poems. I would rather do my own thing, and I told her that. She didnt seem to care.
Anyway.
Inside someone's car:
Friday, January 22, 2010
Walt Whitman
When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Wednesday
I am loving Walt Whitman these days.
I am working on a few projects at once. I have wanted to photograph crime scene areas for a long time, but the specific addresses aren't listed in Lincoln's crime records. However, when I was looking them up, I found about a million daily suicide attempts in Lincoln...within the last two months. Very weird that they list attempts, but I suppose it IS illegal to commit suicide, so you get in some kind of trouble for attempting it as well. I would like to photograph all of these places or people, but they are unlisted. One person attempted twice within a month and failed both times. Jayson Yesilcimen and I were looking at these listings together, and he said "If I really wanted to kill myself, I think I would be successful." Why are so many people attempting suicide in Lincoln, Nebraska and failing? Maybe this is normal for every city?
Maybe Im working on many things at once...Im working on portraits taken from my phone with a strange application that makes them look like they were taken from a toy camera. The colors are terrible, they are pixelated, bad quality...I want to print them as large as the airplane photos I did last semester. I also want to print black and white photos of crime locations (if I can ever find any, or maybe I'll just make them up) on newsprint paper. I also want to hand color photos after I take them to see if I can remember the colors...kind of like a memory test. It might turn out hideous, but it's just an idea I have. I also want to print on fabric (landscape photos/panoramas, which were traditionally/historically taken by men) and then also embroider (traditionally done by women) the photos/fabric...and make a book of them. There are a lot of things I want to try while I have the expensive UNL tools, but I feel like its probably bad to not focus on one thing...I should be done experimenting for now probably, but oh well.
OH...I am also starting a project of taking photos of whats inside strangers cars. It just started when I saw someone with syringes and energy drinks on their dashboard. Possibly the same person that tried to commit suicide twice in one month.
Anyway.
Here are some of the cell phone photos:
On a sidenote...I am reading an article on the "real" reasons men cheat. First of all, what does it matter, there's no decent excuse...and secondly, why am I reading this? It does remind me of my only forty year old friend named Teri. After her divorce was barely final, her ex-husband moved away with the woman he had been cheating with. He not only moved 1,000 miles away from her, but their three children as well. I don't know why this is on my mind.
I am working on a few projects at once. I have wanted to photograph crime scene areas for a long time, but the specific addresses aren't listed in Lincoln's crime records. However, when I was looking them up, I found about a million daily suicide attempts in Lincoln...within the last two months. Very weird that they list attempts, but I suppose it IS illegal to commit suicide, so you get in some kind of trouble for attempting it as well. I would like to photograph all of these places or people, but they are unlisted. One person attempted twice within a month and failed both times. Jayson Yesilcimen and I were looking at these listings together, and he said "If I really wanted to kill myself, I think I would be successful." Why are so many people attempting suicide in Lincoln, Nebraska and failing? Maybe this is normal for every city?
Maybe Im working on many things at once...Im working on portraits taken from my phone with a strange application that makes them look like they were taken from a toy camera. The colors are terrible, they are pixelated, bad quality...I want to print them as large as the airplane photos I did last semester. I also want to print black and white photos of crime locations (if I can ever find any, or maybe I'll just make them up) on newsprint paper. I also want to hand color photos after I take them to see if I can remember the colors...kind of like a memory test. It might turn out hideous, but it's just an idea I have. I also want to print on fabric (landscape photos/panoramas, which were traditionally/historically taken by men) and then also embroider (traditionally done by women) the photos/fabric...and make a book of them. There are a lot of things I want to try while I have the expensive UNL tools, but I feel like its probably bad to not focus on one thing...I should be done experimenting for now probably, but oh well.
OH...I am also starting a project of taking photos of whats inside strangers cars. It just started when I saw someone with syringes and energy drinks on their dashboard. Possibly the same person that tried to commit suicide twice in one month.
Anyway.
Here are some of the cell phone photos:
On a sidenote...I am reading an article on the "real" reasons men cheat. First of all, what does it matter, there's no decent excuse...and secondly, why am I reading this? It does remind me of my only forty year old friend named Teri. After her divorce was barely final, her ex-husband moved away with the woman he had been cheating with. He not only moved 1,000 miles away from her, but their three children as well. I don't know why this is on my mind.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
January 18
I've been getting more into French books and movies lately...maybe because they are so hopeless and depressing. I spent over two hours watching "The Class" which was about a classroom of troubled kids...and it went nowhere. Nothing was fixed, everything was wrong and unfair, and then...The End.
I spend a lot of my time watching movies...I liked this one a lot:
Currently, I'm trying to move all photos from my old laptop to my new one so I can organize my portfolios...but its taking way too long. I don't even know if I want all of them because 80% are of Matt. I can't get myself to throw them away though.
On a completely different topic...My brother recently confessed that he doesn't really care about the people in Haiti. The death count of 140,000 just doesn't effect him. Is their culture too foreign and far away to be respected? Are they less human than us because they are underprivileged and less "advanced"? He told me he just simply couldn't get sad about it. What if that many Americans died?
Anyway.
I'm trying to plan what I want to work on this semester and it's nearly impossible. I can never plan what to do. I just have to start doing something and it hopefully ends up somewhere decent. I am trying to take portraits of people on my phone with this strange application that makes them look like they were taken by a toy camera. It's interesting to me and hopefully I'll print them large again. Or maybe small would be nice. I also want to finally organize my surface photos...pin them up and figure out their order. I have a lot to do this semester...I know it's going to fly by and before I know it, I'll be out in the "real world" without all of my connections to available art teachers and expensive tools.
Over winter break I met the principal of a K-12 school in Iowa. He said that their art teacher is retiring in May and there will be an opening, so he'd hold onto my name and contact information. I hate Iowa, but I'm still interested to see if anything comes of it.
I'll randomly end with this:
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