Ugh, I'm brilliant.
Last night a large group of us were walking back to my friend's house, and my friend Chris and I were running and jumping in puddles. Well in a move of sheer intelligence and grace, I was trying to splash down in a puddle with each footfall by running and jumping as hard as possible. For some reason it did not occur to me that the reason puddles exist is because of uneven ground beneath them. I splashed down with my right ankle into a jagged pot hole posing as an innocent puddle, and I believe I have sprained my ankle. Go me. The worst part is that my car is still at Sam's house, and I can't so much walk anywhere to get an ankle brace. I'm not even going to get into how I have to work in the morning, and do a huge shoot for my senior. This sucks so crazy bad.

I may find this more abhorrent because I'm a vegetarian, and strongly believe in Animal Rights, but seriously... come on. The below images are C-Prints by artist Nathalia Edenmont from the Former Soviet Union. She kills and dismembers mice, rabbits, house cats, and chickens for the sake of her art. I can enjoy the formal beauty of her images but simply can't get over the fact that it's the shock value that she depends on to make here photographs noteworthy. Organizations like PETA have broken into the only gallery which will showcase her work, and destroyed exhibits.




Another artist that I have been reading about recently is Damien Hirst. He is being canonized as the UK's most famous living artist. He has been in the media lately because of his work "For the Love of God" in which he bedazzled a human skull with over 1,100 karats in diamonds set in platinum. It is in negotiations to be sold for $100,000,000, making it the highest selling piece of art in history. (I don't think he saw Blood Diamond). Anyway, the work of Hirst is often controversial. Second to his bling skull he is most famous for taking livestock, fish, and sharks and suspending them in formaldehyde, and plastic. His work reminds me of Bodyworlds which we've discussed a lot in past classes. But Bodyworlds isn't touted as and art exhibit, it is seen as scientific. What is so artistic about someone who takes a chainsaw to a calf and sticks it in a tank to compliment it's bisected mother? The strangest part is that there is far less controversy over Hirst's art than Edenmond. I believe this is because Hirst is not the killer of his subjects. It also goes to show you that the smaller and cuter the animal being disemboweled the greater the outrage.





I am left to wonder if Edenmont had turned a calf's head into a hand puppet, would she have been left alone? Or had she plasticized her pet cat instead of putting it's head on a floral pedestal would the public have cared?

Go forth and stick your dog in a tank of formaldehyde! It is art after all.

After changing my senior thesis idea about three times I've settled on this. I am creating a family by photographing, and subsequentialy photoshopping subjects to a point where they look related. The final images will be printed as four color lithographs using the Pronto Plate technique. This is the first image from the series. I'm naming her Dorthea Lovejoy, and she will have a twin named Clarissa Lovejoy. This is actually my best friend Claire. I've enlarged her head and eyes to make her look oddly childlike. I'm a huge fan or Loretta Lux and she's becoming a huge influence on this project.

I wish someone would tell me which fork to take. I can't make up my mind whether I want to move to Nashville and strike out as a commercial photographer and specialize in editorial rock photography, or take the starving artist path. I wish I felt like I could do both. I have more fun doing rock photography, I like meeting new people and developing that way as an artist. Meh. Hopefully I figure it out soon. I'm looking forward to traveling this winter for my second senior which is sort of a combining of those two passions I can't decide between.

We'll see... convex bubble glass and oval frames are really expensive.

Bozeman. I feel so stuck here. One more of my closest friends just moved away after graduating last December. He moved to California. This was okay though because his girlfriend (another close friend of mine) was staying here, and it was just a 5-6 month internship chasing around sea birds. Well his girlfriend just informed me that she's moving to California as well... so there's no ties for either of them to come back here for. It's very likely that I won't ever see them again unless I have the money to go to southern California for a visit.

Losing friends has been the basic theme this semester. My best friend went abroad, and isn't coming back for good until next fall. I haven't been away from him for this long in the three years I've known him. I've always been the type of person who relates better with guy friends and this semester nearly all of my closest ones have left. It makes it difficult. They were so easy to be friends with, friendships with my lady friends is much more time consuming. Time is the one thing I don't feel like I have.

I've met so many people from bands out on the road this semester, but they always leave, it's inevitable. I was so looking forward to 10 days away to not think of anything and just be with my best friend Claire in Boston. But I have the flu, couldn't go, and I'm basically stuck in bed, alone. Being sick is the pits. Being sick with no one to take care of you is hell.

For my self portrait series I'm thinking about doing spy photography of myself. I've been putting my camera on a timer and setting it in closets, and cabinets. In photoshop I'm adding status reports and information. Kind of like the government is spying on me. I'm having lots of fun taking them, I'm also setting all the date and time stamps one year in the future, because it's scary how close our current administration is to employing such techniques.

Worky worky worky worky....