My First Entry--

Howdy and Welcome,
I had a great residency in Jan. A collection of work that was a 180 from my PJ work I do full time and displayed at the June '07 residency.
I started the semester after the June res. w/ the landscape theme. I eventually moved to a mist them and looking for symbols within the landscape that represented my feelings and reactions of anxiety.
I then moved to a medieval themed work after spending two months thinking on how to approach this work.
I ended up shooting friends of mine who participate (as well as I) in a organization called the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA.org). I began by shooting in a portrait approach, but started to push myself creatively by creating, constructing scenes from the times according to me.
As I progressed into this theme, I was encouraged to work w/ the anachronism as well. Before this, I decided I really wanted to make a visually authentic looking photo that tried to give the viewer a sense of being back to the 13th C.
I did begin to include modern window locks, spray paint or a rattan sword wrapped in duct tape , but the photograph that got the most attention at the residency was a Lady in her Castle using a Dirt Devil vacuum.

The residency went very well. Great input from the faculty and graduating seniors. Most viewers were interested in the transition and transformation my subjects under goes from the modern into their medieval persona as a well as explore the anachronism in a more subtle way.

One of the questions asked of me was, "What do you want to say with your work?" That's a good question. I then began to ponder mankind's core issues and problems that the medieval society dealt with and are they really that different from these contemporary times. It was suggested to go deep into the dark, dank, dungeon psychologically. Make things mysterious. Explore the Dark Ages of now. Play with both sides of the medieval + contemp. times.

I'm a little slow going, mostly because this is a a person/subject + schedule availability driven theme, but this should be a lot of fun! I may also start to get in front of the camera, which I just don't do at all...

Anyway, it was a great time w/ my peers as well. Karoke, acting in a Chris Irvin video, documenting my classmates again or just hanging out at lunches and dinners. Enjoyed faculty member Adam McEwen's lecture, having great crits with the faculty, as well as with graduating seniors Linc Cornell, Kate Philbrick, and Melissa Good. Best of luck to them in their future work!!!

I've started off by reading about medieval history, recommended by my AIB advisor Oscar. I'm in the middle of several books including symbolism in Renn. art, Cindy Sherman's "History Portraits".
Some suggested books and artists:
“Art and Photography”
“Complete Movie Stills”
“Historical Portraits"
“Basic Critical Theory for Photographers”
“Criticizing Photographs”
“Art Photography Now”
Cindy Sherman, Greg Crewdson, Loretta Lux, Justin Kurland, Max Becher, Jeff Wall, Angelika Rinnhofer, painters Peter Bruegel, Hans Holbein, and Jan Steen.
Any other suggestions, lemme know!!!!

I landed painter Peter Clive of the NH Inst. of Art in Manchester as my mentor. He has some great narrative and beautiful light within his work. Should be fun.

I think that's it for now.
MB