Started a thread over there

 On bluesky, then decided, f-that, just do it here. Don't want to thread, don't really feel like I need to share this in that space. But i wanted to get it out of my notepad and somewhere else.

So one cool thing the Arts Initiative group here has started was expand their monthly staff art gathering to include the whole university, inviting other colleagues that are also artists in any media/form/style together for a monthly gathering for an hour, to present and share. 

This month was IR and an amazing collage artist Karson. Karson's stuff was mind blowing, and lately doing some really cool animation using hand cut collage images and digitizing them (go check it here: https://www.instagram.com/karson_art/ ).

IR did a talk with his street style photographs of mostly current work. He's been a photographer for 5 years now. I'm trying not to laugh at that. 5 years. But for him, 5 years is a long time. For me? Yeah not so much. And that's okay. Like I said, I'm letting him own that confidence of the 5 years. And the reality is I'm jealous of that confidence and that ownership. Also like RP, IR is part of one of the big art clubs in town. There's two that keep coming up. This one. And the second. The second seems much more approachable, fees are even reasonable. The first one? I'll be reasonably polite in that it seems to reflect a section of society with opportunities for leisure and a desire to entertain and collaborate with others of similar levels of taste and standing. Someone who's worked two jobs most of their life, never really taken a vacation much less have a vacation house or what not. Yeah so maybe that's enough ground work. 

I suppose if you are in at that level and really get into that side of things, it could be really good to be there, to be in there. Obviously I'm not or I'd have a different more concrete evaluation of the places.

Exhibit? Could be cool. Sales and return on 'investment'? probably but not something I've even had much luck with and wouldn't count on. Disposable income? Yeah. No.

yes I'm jaded and cynical and that's probably a big barrier. But I'm also still occasionally struggling to call myself a photographer or an artist. Although lots of people call me just that. Both and seriously w/o mocking. Seems odd.

Shit just got into a Joe Gittleman sidetrack. TOTALLY FUCKING DERAILED.

Okay, forget the people who are a little less inclusive than AS220 but also different. 

Forget the part that to make any money on the art you need to spend a lot of time on it, marketing, internet, mailing, submitting, printing, framing, organizing, communicating...  If that's gonna happen I'll need an agent. Otherwise I'll just try and keep taking pictures and sharing them and accumulating negatives. One day I'll start printing them. Maybe soon.

Maybe not.

OKAY to circle way back around about the talk. Along with each one of IR's photos they shared some quotes. And I wanted to put them down here...

And I'd better do that before I get sidetracked again.

Elliot Erwin "“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place…. I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”" 

Matt Stuart "Street photography is an attitude, a state of mind, a way of being, rather than something that has to be done exclusively on the streets of cities." 

Trent Parke " I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical" 

Ty Holland " A photograph is the pause button on life."

Robert Frank " When people look at my pictures, I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem"

Henri Cartier-Bresson "To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression."

Susan Meiselas " The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise didn't being. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of separation"

Andre Kertesz "seeing is not enough you have to feel what you photograph" 

Garry Winogrand "the photograph should be more interesting or more beautiful than what was photographed"

Ken Rockwell "Photography is the power of observation, not the application of technology"

Okay go do your shit - i might not race CX two weekends in a row, seems crazy esp going into two weeks when I know I can't race. 

Who am I anymore? I dunno.

But we keep moving forward eh? What else to do...

Heddwch
G