3 posts tagged “photography”

Julie, Ali & I showed up at the Flat Iron building, aka The Coyote, last Saturday morning. A few studios were open but no one was taking tickets. We wandered around and I wondered if we had arrived too early...I mean I know the opening party was the night before but I thought the thing would start before noon. I took a closer look at the Around the Coyote poster and noticed it was at it's new location in the West Loop. I had checked out their website a couple times in the past month and completely missed the part about a new location. I think it should have been more prominent. As Steve Krug puts it in his web usability book "Too-sublte visual cues are actually a very common problem. Designers love subtle cues, because subtlety is one of the traits of sophisticated design. But Web users are generally in such a hurry that they routinely miss subtle cues. In general, if you're a designer and you think a visual cue is sticking out like a sore thumb, it probably means you need to make it twice as prominent." I fall into both the designer and Web user categories and in this case I was the rushing Web User and could've used a nice big and/or bright "New Location!" cue somewhere. I love to visit Bucktown as much as the next girl but I would have planned my weekend a bit differently had I known about the new location.

My favorite artists this year were Stephan Giannini & Sarah Perez. Stephan's painting of a woman on the train was my absolute favorite piece of the whole show. I'm a sucker for traditional figure painting and loved this wistful looking train commuter. Could've been me taking the train to the Palette & Chisel when I lived in Chicago. Suppose another reason I loved it so much as this is the kind of thing I might paint could I find time between web classes, work & freelance design. There were some great land/cityscape photos at the show but I really respond to photos with people. Sarah's photos had a nouveau-antique feel. See here & here! Love!

The new setting at Plumber's Hall in the West Loop was nice but I missed the nooks & crannies of the Coyote. We heard some artists tallking about this leveling the playing field since some of them were missed/overlooked in the old location. Some of the regular artists weren't there this year. I really missed touring Jo-Jo's Closet, collector of strange stuff. Out of his closet, you lose the context since his stuff wouldn't easily translate to a white-walled booth. Artists with larger works could only fit a small number of pieces on their two walled booths. Julie was happy we stopped by the original location since her favorite painter had her studio open and she was not in the West Loop either. Later that day I read an article about the move that stated the new location was an up and coming art area with many studios. However we who parked about 5 very loooong blocks away (by The Oprah Show studio) did not see any sign of life on that street. However there was parking enough for half of Chicago which was a plus. We had grabbed the first spot we saw since we were conditioned by the Bucktown/Wicker Park parking experience.

Though the days of polaroid are drawing to a close, I have seen two movies in the last two weeks in which they featured prominently. First it was Martian Child and then it was 2 Days in Paris. A character in 2 Days in Paris also postulated that constantly photographing "the moment" takes you out of the moment. This can be true and it seems to be happening to some of my "friends" in the land of facebook. On a related note, I found an interesting tip in The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World. One of the author's techniques for an introvert to navigate a party or gathering was to take photographs. That distance from the moment/direct conversation with others can be just what an introvert might need to stay relaxed. Not to mention a great way to move around the room without the pressure of conversing with everyone. I think this would be a great technique to ease into a conversation, a sort of warm up lap of photography but one would need to be careful not to hide behind the camera. In the case of the facebook friends, I think some of them need to move away from the front of the camera. Less posing and more living!

Do you do facebook? It's weird. Some people crawl out of the woodwork and send friend requests and when you actually ask them a question they never respond. I guess they prefer to have groundhogs chucked at them and be bitten by vampires than converse...which are some of the delightful things you can do in place of real human interactions. You should totally sign up if you haven't already. Actually was contacted by old friend I'm happy to be reconnected to. We were reminiscing about school days and she recalled the Halloween in junior high where I dressed up as Wayne from "Wayne & Garth" fame (my friend Laura was Garth). I just caught the last 20 minutes of Wayne's World the weekend before last. It was delightfully awful as always!

Facebook an awesome vehicle for your friends to share unflattering photos of you too. A girlfriend and I just checked out the "FOTO: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918–1945" photographic exhibition as the Milwaukee Art Museum. There was one photo a woman's face looking up at the camera. I told my friend that that would definitely be her profile pic if facebook would have existed then. After that revelation we were seeing profile pictures everywhere! I will never view a photo exhibition in the same way again...this will likely affect my perspective of oil portraiture as well!