exploring

from 12/31/95

the next thing

Ed Ruscha, Dare #2, 2001

Well, New Romantics closed this past weekend. It was a good show. My first show. Now on to the next thing. I'm designing a new photo blog with Leilani Wertens that's launching very soon, maybe next week. It'll have interviews with new contemporary photographers, reviews of books and shows, and an events listing for shows and other photo stuff that should not be missed. It'll be Chicago or Midwest-centric instead of NY/east coast-centric. This kind of thing is needed. Today I was designing the home page and somehow subconsciously channeled Ed Ruscha. I've always felt I have a connection with him...

Anyway, look for the site to be up in the near future. It's name is Dorothea & Western. We got the domain with a "-" instead of the ampersand because it's easier to type. I doubt we'll put the meaning of the name on the website so here's the one and only explanation that you'll find on the web. We wanted to name it after a very important and significant photographer to both of us (Leilani and I) and we wanted it to also be about a place or the idea of a place but without it being too local. So, for the photographer we chose Dorothea as in Dorothea Lange. This also helped us decide what the other name was to be. We picked Western not only because it is the place of the West that is meaningful but also the idea of the west; to head west, to be westward bound. That idea has meant so much not only to the history of the U.S. but to many photographers as well. Also, Western is the street that you would take to get to either my or Leilani's house- kinda nifty.

opening tonight

NEW ROMANTICS
East Bank Studios
1200 W 35th St. (north entrance off Racine)
Chicago, IL
Opening April 24, 5-9 pm

install

photo by Matt Austin

a bfa can be good for something

this is happening

after a day of painting.

nate working hard.

what I did. it is still visible under a coat of paint.

the bluffs and the bench

New Romantics

Jessica Bruah, Shamrock Hotel Resort and Suites, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin

It is a go.

New Romantics
An exhibition of contemporary photography about landscape that continues to explore the ideas of Romanticism.
April 22-May 9th
Open Thurs-Sun, 12-6pm
1200 W 35th St.

Opening Reception
April 24th, 5-9pm

Closing Reception
May 8th, 5-9pm

Artist Links

Matt Austin
Jessica Bruah
Bill Guy
Nate Mathews
Jason Reblando
Mike Reinders

Hope to see you there.

mmmmmm... donuts.

Martin Parr will be in Chicago at Stephen Daiter this Friday for an opening of an exhibition that spans 30 years of his work. Parr has no less than 50 monographs to his credit. I have a copy of his Mexico monograph and am hoping he'll do me the honor of signing it. What a pleasure it has been though to have Eggleston and now Parr in a matter of weeks gracing Chicago with their presence and great exhibitions of their work. I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I say this but... if you don't like Martin Parr, you might not like making photographs.

Eggleston

William Eggleston at The Art Institute of Chicago

two rivers

the missouri and the mississippi

some more gardens

It took me a while but I am finally scanning all the negs from this winter. These go all the way back to late November when I made the trip to Garden of the Gods near Herod, IL. I'll have more next week. I'm a little disappointed that 4 of the negs got ruined when the processor went down at the lab... I could probably re-shoot them if I could get down to Missouri in the next few weeks. But still, I'm pretty happy with most of what I got, especially the top pic on this post.

on break

Its been a little quiet lately. Photos I shot at the end of last year are still waiting to be scanned (the lab at school is closed a further 2 weeks) and I'll be working on 2 grants and a job application in the coming weeks. But to keep the blog going, I'll post a little about the new branch of my project that's been on my mind lately.

I've been photographing observatories for the past year in between shooting the views for "The Expected Frontier". While shooting these magnificent pieces of star-gazing architecture I wondered, "is there anything more I could be doing for this part of the project?" And of course, the answer was "yes there is." I've recently become obsessed with the early years of space exploration, the Apollo program and everything after that has been progressing towards the event of exploring new land. If there's ever a mission to Mars in the next 60 years, I want to be the next Timothy O'Sullivan or W.H. Jackson that gets to go and photograph with an 8x10. Most of the work I've made so far I hope, helps make the case for me to go. But in the meantime, I might need something else to keep me occupied. This next part of the project will do that easily.

When I heard that they (I guess the government and NASA together) decided to discontinue the shuttle program, I was a little upset. People had been going into space using the shuttle since I was born and I had watched launches and had been playing with toy shuttles since I could remember. It didn't make sense to me. It was like they were deciding to stop progress. The shuttle program is old and the shuttles themselves have been used way past the time they were supposed to retire. However, there was never any practical idea that surfaced to replace them. I guess they're working on that now but in the meantime, the U.S. has to catch a ride with the Russians on their rockets.

So, that leaves me wondering "well what are we (the U.S.) going to do while we wait for NASA to build the next space shuttles?" Are we still going to make progress in exploring space or are we going to fall back? The next part of my photographic project will look at this question and document the things related to how we are going to get there. This probably won't come out as literal as I'm proposing but I hope it will be more of an exploration of the idea of space as "frontier" and how this idea really is entrenched into the U.S.. Or, maybe not the whole U.S. but me, at least.

That's where I'll leave it for now. I have places to go in mind like Edwards AFB in California and I'd like to get to see one of the last space shuttles launch- the last one will happen sometime in the later half of 2011. But what I'd really like to find is that toy space shuttle that I had when I was kid and got so much use out of that I had to buy another one myself, with my own money.

From the bottom of the 13th page of google results for "toy shuttles"