The photoblog below is the most recent in a succession of regularly updated photo projects I’ve maintained since May of 2006. Much work has been pushed aside in the process of constantly reworking this site, but recently I went back and found that I still quite like some of the images, and I’m kinda proud of myself for keeping up the (barely at times) regular posts, even if my reasons for wanting to do so have changed or gotten lost and found again over time.

Most of these revisited images have now been added to my current photoblog via Tumblr.

Visit the archive

For those of you who were there, I hope it is an enjoyable walk down memory lane.

Over the holidays, I whipped up a site for my good friend Michael Brush where you can suggest any skill for him to learn, and then you get to watch him quickly learn it sort of.

I also got to make the video for his first skill: krumping. Created on an iPad, we shot this at every rest stop along the south-bound New Jersey turnpike, then edited it together the same night in a Waffle House.

2012 is gonna be fun.

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of co-creating with Rachel Lyons a projected animation for “The Storm”, one of the sequences from “Lillian: A Folk Opera”. The show, conceived and performed by Ben Lear, debuted at Le Poisson Rouge, NY. With Ben’s permission, our animation is now on YouTube with a stand-in version of the song; the piece was designed to be shown in sync with a live orchestra.

Yes, the first minute or so is supposed to be black (it’s not entirely if you watch closely). Keep in mind, this was projected across two large screens in a dark room. This is the moment when a great storm that has been foreshadowed throughout the show arrives.

EVENING RED PRESS : a brand new online literary and arts magazine edited by Sam Grabus and maintained by me is now online. The debut Spring 2010 issue contains a few of my images among a variety of contributions from 13 other talented artists. Yes, I said Spring issue; it was ready for release a bit later than we’d planned because we wanted to be sure the quality of the site was up to our standards before allowing it to represent us and the artists entrusting their work to us.

We’re hoping to grow into something that can provide a type of ideal venue for writers that is scarcely available around the internet today for some reason, as well as a supportive atmosphere for all artists who are excited by thoughts of the expanding possibilities for stretching the boundaries of existing artistic mediums, and playing with completely new ones. Take that how you will. Art makers of all kinds are welcome to submit work at any time; the deadline for issue #2 is July 1st.

I hope you enjoy Issue #1, and please follow us on Twitter, or add your email to our mailing list on the home page to stay in the loop as we start to figure out where we’re going from here.

http://eveningredpress.com

LILLIAN
If you’re in New York this Friday, you should join me in going to see Ben Lear’s performance of Lillian: A Folk Opera at Le Poisson Rouge. If your tastes are similar to mine and the words “folk opera” don’t immediately jump out at you, head over to the offical Lillian site where you can read about the show and hear some song previews. Give the music a listen; it’s pretty solid. One of the show’s songs will feature an animation by me, with additional animation work by Rachel Lyons, projected across the two screens that make up the show’s backdrop.

The show is this Friday night at 8pm (doors open at 7pm).
Tickets are $15 ($8 with student ID).
You can buy tickets (and look at the snazzy promo shot I took of Ben) on the Le Poisson Rouge website.

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THE THICKET
Secondly, at the same time Rachel has been doing some of the animating for Lillian‘s visuals, I’ve been doing some editing work for a new short video piece of hers. “Bug” is currently on display at the Towson Commons Gallery in Towson, MD (map) as part of “The Thicket”, an exhibition of photography and video work by Kate Barnes, Alex Garove, and Rachel Lyons.

Show hours (***EDITED): The gallery space is maintained solely by the exhibiting artists for the duration of the show, so hours may have to bend around when someone is available to be there. For this reason, there is now an online calendar that will be kept current; you can always check this to see when the gallery is scheduled to be open before going to visit. Soon it will also list specifically which artist will be around on what days, plus more details about the closing reception as it is planned.

THOUSAND EYES

My friend Rose went on a road trip though Effingham, Illinois with some fellow travelers and a disposable camera, and this is what they came up with. If you can’t remember what the assignment was all about, or if you’d still like to do it and send me something, the original instructions page is still up.

Happy 2010. Let’s start planning our 2012 mega-party now. Question is, which party should be bigger, the one we have on December 21st, or the one we have on December 22nd?

See:
1. Rin: a creature of light, observing and gathering imagery from the web.
2. Avi: a creature that wants to connect with others, but has only the sense of touch.
3. Himhim: an eye and two furry nubs that try to imitate speech.

From her statement:
“SearchingForMother.net is a search engine that allows for exploring the use and patterns in relation to the word and idea of mother. With a click on an investigative word of who, what, where, why or when, the internet is searched for the most recent blog, twitter and flickr posts containing the word mother. Each investigative word of who, what, where, why or when, pulls a different subset of other words in tandem or relation to the word mother. These individual searches help answer sometimes directly mostly indirectly the investigations of who mother is, what mother is, where mother is and why mother is. Repeated clicks on one investigative word will pull different responses each time. Searching for Mother is a time based piece. Each visit to the site will bring a different set of responses and will help grow a collective picture, definition and idea of mother as she appears on the internet.”

Searching for Mother is part of an exhibition of work by Erika on view at La Salle University in Philadelphia until December 11.




Image credit: preview image on Flickr

by Rachel Lyons