My mind seems to ramble lately about place..I continue to question what that means to me. I began to think about my childhood homes but that no longer feels like my place rather more of someplace I visit. So then what becomes my place? Is it where I currently live just because it's my address? Is that ok that my sense is more than one place especially since I grew up knowing more than one place as my home? What is it then I'm trying to say is it about home or place are they interchangeable? How then can I further push my sense of place visually, an idea I had this weekend was to put portraits with places? is that really getting at my own sense of place. I need to further investigate the self-portraits.
I met with my mentor Jesseca Ferguson for the first time last Thursday. It was a good first meeting she gave me some other artist's and books to look at. I have been photographing myself in my surroundings and objects within my apartment and outside and in my neighborhood. Jesseca suggested pushing beyond just straight photography spreading out my ideas on the wall of my studio and make different parts of my home. We discussed some images I had put into two grids on my studio wall. I challenged myself to photograph one roll of film inside my apartment and another one outside in one afternoon. I am currently pushing that further by shooting one roll a day for an entire week. Today I did not get all the way through my 36 exp roll but my plan is to finish it tomorrow. The challenge for me is the light, I photographed this evening a little with flash. This should be an interesting experiment.
This weekend I spent some time outdoors but also watched Edward Burtynsky Manufactured Landscapes, it was a beautiful documentary. I really loved what he said at the end of the film that while his work is making a political statement, he wants the work to be more about the conclusion the viewer makes rather than pushing his work as a political statement.

Finally feeling like a human again after being sick this past week, thank god for a few more days off from work. Went to the studio yesterday to organize some work and go through some ideas I definitely need to just keep pushing through my ideas. Not really sure where my ideas are taking me right now but I goal for the semester is to be uncomfortable and I am feeling that.
Went to the DeCordova to see the new photography show which was just what I needed. See some other work for inspiration it was a big show with a mix photographers work. I enjoyed the landscape photographs of Elke Morris she photographs in Maine and then creates a sense of place in photoshop. There was a mixed media piece by Peter Sullivan that created a sense of layers and information.
I am still thinking about ideas of place and how can I visually push those ideas. I tried some drawings of maps of home from my mind I'm not really happen with the sketches. I did photograph maps again so I'm planning to work with them in photoshop.

Ugh I'm sick, and home from work. Everything finally caught up to me. I have a lot of printing I want to get done, last week I did a bunch of shooting that I was happy with. Lots of self-portraits and some studies of my interior and exterior space which I had printed and I'm looking at in a grid. Lot's of ideas still flowing I'm trying to keep working through the weirdness. I have been reading and watching Art 21 season 3. While resting I'm trying to work on some more reading today.

Getting back into it...well it's finally happening I am able to balance everything a little better. The first two weeks back at work were rough to say the least. I have been shooting a lot and just finished my residency summary so I have a lot of information floating around in my brain. After writing my paper some of my bigger questions are why am I photographing place? What does place mean to me? I've been thinking a lot about the landscape I photograph, I started doing some self portraits and more interior shots I am interested to see how those will look together with outside landscapes. Yesterday I thought about photographing myself but in my different places, such as my parents house, my apartment, etc and creating a sequence from that. Perhaps photographing in different rooms and making connections. My work feels like it is in an awkward place and I know I need to take a risk so I am just shooting and hoping to both work through it and find that jump I need to make in my work.
On Friday I went to First Friday on Harrison ave, despite the rain it as fun to look around. I enjoyed Lissa Rivera's work of private schools and Greek life. Especially her work of private schools it is interesting to see the spaces empty something she perhaps planned yet on a normal say that wouldn't be the case. I thought about that in connection to my own lonely landscapes, images of the city that seem empty. I have also been looking into lectures and upcoming shows I want to see. I have been in touch with my mentor Jesseca and we will hopefully be meeting next week. I am really looking forward to getting started with that. Now I'm off to more shooting and reading!

My life has become a real balancing act, I mean I knew it would be going in to this and it continues to be. Finishing this residency and going right back to work has been a challenge. I feel in a much better place than I was in the fall. The past two weeks I have been thinking about my work and all the questions I have what will me next leap be? As I go back over my notes and listen to recordings of critiques (glad I got the voice recorder it has been very helpful) and thinking about ideas and different ways to print. I don't have the answers to my questions yet I do know I need to get into the studio and make and keep reading. I'm in the process of updating new information for the semester onto my blog.
Last Friday I went to the Griffin Museum to see the Stephen Wilkes gallery talk. His image of Ellis Island are beautiful and got me thinking both about his scale and the text he put next to his images, both things I have been thinking about in my own work.

As an archive below is my book list that I read and artists from Semester 1:
Else/Where: Mapping. Janet Abrams
Camera Lucida Reflections on Photography. Roland Barthes
“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations. Walter Benjamin
Ways of Seeing. John Berger
The Future of Nostalgia. Svetlana Boym
The Art of Light + Space. Jan Butterfield
You Are Here. Katherine Harmon
Photography: A Critical Introduction. Liz Wells
“Sweet it is to Scan…’: Personal Photographs and Popular Photography.” Patricia Holland
Illuminations Women Writing on Photography from the 1850s to the Present. Liz Heron and Val Williams. “Remembrance” Annette Kuhn and “What Becomes a Legend Most: The Short, Sad Career of Diane Arbus.” Catherine Lord.
On Photography. Susan Sontag
Everything That Rises A Book of Convergences. Lawerence Weschler
Artists:
David Salle, Gary Duehr, Cindy Sherman, Abelardo Morell, William Eggleston, Nikki S. Lee, Bruce Gilden, Azra Aksamija, Lewis Baltz, Light and Space artists of Southern California, Jerry Eisenberg, Gerhard Richter, Georges Braque, James Valerio, Karen Kitchel, John Virtue, John Walker, Anne Appleby, Robert Smithson, Starn twins, Gordon Matta-Clark, Rosemary Laing, Justine Kurland, and Lauren Greenfield.
Aaron Siskind, Dan Eldon, Robert Frank, William Wegman, and Irene Shwachman.

It's been a week and half since the residency ended and it seems like it was a long time ago. Work has been insane since coming back from the residency. I plan on spending this weekend going through all my notes and compiling my thoughts for my first paper. I have been working on processing all the ideas from critiques there was a lot of great information floating in my head! Thinking a lot about my last critique of the residency with Oscar Palacio he had great recommendations and questions for my to tackle. I know I just need to start making work again to push through where I am currently, what am I trying to say about my sense of place? I am looking forward to taking more risks this semester in my work I'm just not sure what those are yet. Lot's of things to think about....

I can't believe it's 2008 and I'm about to start my second residency. It's been a busy year and I'm excited about where my work is headed. I have been starting to think about questions I have about my work for the residency. How can I further incorporate maps into my work? Is a visual narrative coming through in my imagery?
I want to begin further exploring drawing my own maps. When I drove home for the holidays I thought a lot about the space around me and what I was seeing as I was driving. Ways I could translate what I saw into a drawn map of my own. I'm sure I will have more questions and answers over the next 10 days.