The Inverted Forest

John Berger, 1984

2012-01-16T15:14:00.000-08:00

One night, walking in the countryside near Prijedor in Bosnia, I found a solitary glow-worm, with its amber-green light, under some grasses. I picked it up and carried it on my finger where it glowed like an electric opal on a ring. When I approached the house the other lights competed too strongly, and it put its own out.

In the bedroom I placed it on some leaves on top of the chest of drawers. When I put the light out, the glow-worm glowed again. At the back of the dressing table was a mirror which faced the window. If I lay on my side I saw a star reflected in the mirror and the glow-worm beneath on the chest of drawers. The only difference between them was that the light of the glow-worm was slightly greener, more glacial, further away.

Figure Studies

2011-11-19T09:00:00.000-08:00

Red Grass

2011-09-17T20:35:00.000-07:00

Jorie Graham, "On Difficulty"

2011-09-17T20:15:00.001-07:00

It's that they want to know whose they are,
seen from above in the half burnt-out half blossomed-out
woods, late April, unsure as to whether to
turn back.
The woods are not their home.
The blossoming is not their home. Whatever's back there
is not. Something floats in the air all round them
as if it were the place
where the day drowns,
and the place at the edge of cries, for instance, that fissure, gleams.
Now he's holding his hand out.
Is there a hollow she's the shape of?
And in their temples a thrumming like
what-have-I-done?-- but not yet a question, really, not
yet what slips free of he voice to float like a brackish foam
on emptiness--
Oh you will come to it, you two down there
where the vines begin, you will come to it,
the thing towards which you reason, the place where the flotsam
of the meanings is put down
and the shore
holds. They're thinking
how low the bushes are, after all, how finite
the options one finds in the
waiting (after all). More like the branchings of whiteness
always stopping short into this shade or that,
breaking inertia then stopping,
breaking the current at last into shape but then
stopping--
If you asked them, where they first find the edges of each other's bodies, where
happiness resides they'd look up through the gap
in the greenery you're looking down through.
What they want to know-- the icons silent in the shut church (to the left),
the distance silent in the view (to the right)--
is how to give themselves away,
which is why they look up now,
which is why they'll touch each other now (for your
looking), which is why they want to know what this
reminds you of
looking up, reaching each other for you to see, for you to see by, the long
sleep
beginning, the long sleep of resemblance,
touching each other further for you that Eternity begin, there, between you,
letting the short jabs of grass hold them up for you to count by,
to color the scene into the believable by,
letting the thousands of individual blossoms add up
and almost (touching her further) block your view of them--
When you look away
who will they be dear god and what?

Night Masks

2011-07-15T12:40:00.001-07:00

I saw, utterly,

this life.
I’d put it on.
I’d wear it like

--a crown, for
how it flashes.

-Carl Phillips, “Regalia Figure”

In creating a series of masked portraits, I am interested in the subverting the portrait genre’s privileging of the human face as a site of meaning and essential individuality. I covered the body with the clutter of a cultural landscape that is messy, consumptive, dispeopled. In this way, fragile notions of individual identity are eclipsed by the rituals of meaning-making that surround the production and consumption of everyday objects. I hope to reveal our relationship to the material world as a complex, fetishistic, emotional, and ritual phenomenon that is deeply embedded in our lived experience. This project is a serial rephrasing of the disjunction between the enduring myth of the individual and the enlivened material landscape.

Senior Show at Oberlin College, Spring 2011

The Backseat

2011-07-06T13:08:00.000-07:00

Cosmic Ghost

2011-07-06T13:02:00.000-07:00

The Infield

2011-06-16T22:01:00.000-07:00

Another Haircut

2011-06-16T21:45:00.000-07:00

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

2011-06-16T21:39:00.000-07:00

The Dance, Part II

2011-04-17T14:27:00.000-07:00

Late Sunday Morning

2011-04-05T12:32:00.000-07:00

"[...]Their heads and their glances collected toward a common center, and restored, and they sang us another, a slow one this time; I had a feeling, through their silence before entering it, that it was their favorite and their particular pride; the tenor lifted out his voice alone in a long, plorative line that hung like fire on heaven, or whistle's echo, sinking, sunken, along descents of a modality I had not heard before, and sank along the arms and breast of the bass as might a body sunken from a cross; and the baritone lifted a long black line of comment; and they ran in a long and slow motion and convolution of rolling as at the bottom of a stormy sea, voice meeting voice as ships in dream, retreated, met once more, much woven, digression and returns of time, quite tuneless, the bass, over and over, approaching, drooping, the same declivity, the baritone taking over, a sort of metacenter, murmuring along monotones between major and minor, nor in any determinable key, the tenor winding upward like a horn, a wire, the flight of a bird, almost into full declamation, then failing it, silencing; at length enlarging, the others lifting, now, alone, lone, and largely, questioning, alone and not sustained, in the middle of space, stopped; and now resumed, sunken upon the bosom of the bass, the head declined; both muted, droned, the baritone makes his comment, unresolved, that is a question, all on one note; and they are quiet, and do not look at us nor at anything."

James Agee, from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 1941

Bob Mizer

2011-03-28T19:39:00.000-07:00

Soldier and Sailor, 1971

Tony Farrell and Jim Lee (Kissing Rocks), 1971

Kurt Koenig, 1971

Unknown (Jumping) 1973

Sleeper

2011-03-24T12:36:00.000-07:00

from the wikipedia page on stereoscopy

From Vertigo

2011-03-20T15:27:00.000-07:00

heads turn like perfect worlds

Carl Phillips, X

2011-03-20T15:22:00.000-07:00

Several hours past that
of knife and fork

laid across one another
to say done, X

is still for the loose
stitch of beginners,

the newlywed
grinding next door

that says no one
but you, the pucker

of lips only, not yet
the wounds those lips

may be drawn to. X,
as in variable,

anyone's body, any set
of conditions, your

body scaling whatever
fence of chain-metal Xs

desire throws up, what
your spreadeagled limbs

suggest, falling, and
now, after. X, not

just for where in my
life you've landed,

but here too, where
your ass begins its

half-shy, half-weary
dividing, where I

sometimes lay my head
like a flower, and

think I mean something
by it. X is all I keep

meaning to cross out.

Whites

2011-02-03T11:02:00.000-08:00

The Year in Backs

2011-02-03T10:05:00.001-08:00

Stella Watching a Haircut

2011-02-03T10:03:00.001-08:00

Last Swim of the Year

2011-02-03T09:42:00.001-08:00

Coney Island

2011-02-03T09:37:00.001-08:00

Allison

2011-02-03T09:36:00.000-08:00

Around Walnut

2011-02-03T09:32:00.000-08:00

whodunit

2011-01-16T15:06:00.000-08:00

3

2010-12-08T14:03:00.001-08:00

Matt Donovan, from "Fumbling with a Field Guide on the Back Arroyo Trail"

2010-12-07T17:43:00.000-08:00

I once found a deer collapsed near a lake — sleek,
immaculate, & unmoving except for its antlers, which swarmed
with orange-&-black-speckled butterflies that obliterated
the velvet beneath. Whatever word explains this,
I don’t want to know it yet.

Lily in the Backseat

2010-12-06T11:49:00.000-08:00

Hey Ma

2010-12-06T11:47:00.001-08:00

Varsity

2010-11-08T12:30:00.001-08:00

Nadia the Beautiful

2010-10-19T23:52:00.001-07:00

Another Season

2010-10-19T23:49:00.000-07:00

Caterpillar

2010-10-19T23:32:00.000-07:00

Joanna

2010-10-19T23:26:00.001-07:00

work in progress, mask series

2010-10-19T22:49:00.000-07:00

picturebooks

2010-09-26T00:46:00.000-07:00

Herbert Bayer, Design for a cinema

2010-09-16T12:28:00.001-07:00

Motherland

2010-09-09T20:48:00.001-07:00

Housepainting

2010-08-31T16:46:00.000-07:00

Nick Flynn

2010-08-30T14:57:00.000-07:00

Emptying Town

-- after Provincetown

Each fall this town empties, leaving me
drained, standing on the dock, waving bye-
bye, the white handkerchief
stuck in my throat. You know the way Jesus

rips open his shirt
to show us his heart, all flaming & thorny,
the way he points to it. I'm afraid
the way I miss you

will be this obvious. I have

a friend who everyone warns me
is dangerous, he hides
bloody images of Jesus around my house

for me to find when I come home -- Jesus
behind the cupboard door, Jesus tucked

into the mirror. He wants to save me
but we disagree from what. My version of hell
is someone ripping open his
shirt & saying,

Look what I did for you.

Alice Coltrane, Going Home

2010-08-26T20:07:00.001-07:00

☼☼☼

John Berryman, Dream Song 29

2010-08-26T19:50:00.000-07:00

There sat down, once, a thing on Henry's heart
so heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time
Henry could not make good.
Starts again always in Henry's ears
the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime.

And there is another thing he has in mind
like a grave Sienese face a thousand years
would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,
with open eyes, he attends, blind.
All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;
thinking.

But never did Henry, as he thought he did,
end anyone and hacks her body up
and hide the pieces, where they may be found.
He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody's missing.
Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.
Nobody is ever missing.

Before Impound

2010-08-26T19:05:00.001-07:00

More from A. Kanevsky

2010-08-26T19:01:00.000-07:00

Aquatint etchings. Too incredible. Better when bigger.

Alex Kanevsky

2010-08-26T18:57:00.000-07:00

say hey, kid

David and Devra

2010-08-26T18:30:00.001-07:00

Still a Sucker For It

2010-08-26T18:28:00.000-07:00

John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Chicago Trip: Post-Graduation Plans?

2010-08-16T19:14:00.001-07:00

Chicago Trip: Banh Mi Before, During, and After

2010-08-16T19:11:00.000-07:00

Chicago Trip: Bloomingdale Trail

2010-08-16T18:58:00.000-07:00

Check it out!

Chicago Trip: Cuties Around the House

2010-08-16T18:54:00.001-07:00

The Dance

2010-08-01T01:44:00.001-07:00

New Stuff for Nad

2010-07-31T16:32:00.000-07:00

Advent

I want to say "the end
of days." Like the shut

door is enough to talk about. Like
your mouth made no sound

when it opened. Like we push
old salt to the back of the cupboard

to make room for new salt. The end
of days, or the slow sweat

those days brought. Last night
I set a bowl of milk on the porch

of your old house, where you or anybody
might step in it by accident. Come back.

Leo's Kite

2010-07-31T16:25:00.000-07:00

Josh, Robing

2010-07-31T16:16:00.000-07:00

Peter and Cubby

2010-07-31T16:15:00.000-07:00

Joanna

2010-07-31T16:13:00.001-07:00

The Magic of Nature

2010-07-31T16:11:00.000-07:00

Someone Else's Christmas

2010-07-31T16:05:00.001-07:00

From another preloaded thrift store camera:

Carl Phillips, from the 2nd stanza of "On Restraint"

2010-07-29T21:31:00.001-07:00

There are horses in the distance, so say so.

There are horses in the distance,
not running, smoke-still.

Not running yet: the idea of To run.

Not running but getting ready to run.

There are no horses in the distance, but
say so.

There is smoke,

or a fog that, from this distance,
is any number of horses, not running.

Carl Phillips, Regalia Figure

2010-07-24T07:30:00.000-07:00

We were mistaken, I think.

I think the soul wants
no mate
except body, what it has

already, I think
the body is not
a cage,

no,

but the neccessary foil
against which the soul
proves it was always

true, what they said: to stand
unsuffering
in the presence of another's
agony is its own
perhaps difficult but
irrefutable pleasure.

That I might not have
thought so, without
you, I understand now.

Likewise, about the body
wanting most
only another body, the flesh
from within
lit as if with an instinct for,

endlessly, more
of itself, for a joint suffering which,

if it too is a kind of pleasure,

if also the only one the body is
likely in this lifetime to

come into, how refuse?

Possibly-- probably-- there
was not ever a choice
anyway.

The revised version of
effortless.

The twice-plowed-
back-into-itself
field, the light
upon it,

the animal lives
inside the field, inside the light--

I am learning to pity
less what
lacks will entirely.

There are things worse than being
like that. -- And yet,
to let go of it, ambition,
seems as impossible, as
impossible--

How extend forgiveness
insincerely? Meeting you,

I knew you utterly.
I saw, utterly,

this life.
I'd put it on.
I'd wear it like

--a crown, for
how it flashes.

Gerhard Richter, Betty, 1988

2010-07-11T08:51:00.000-07:00

Oil on canvas

Milk and Lasers

2010-07-11T08:43:00.000-07:00

From the film roll that was left inside a thrift store camera.

Gerhard Richter's Overpainted Photographs

2010-07-11T08:27:00.000-07:00

Bun of Beauty

2010-05-11T14:32:00.001-07:00

Donutface Diptych

2010-04-21T14:18:00.001-07:00

Men of Oberlin

2010-04-21T14:13:00.000-07:00

Cecliy Brown, Eclogue, 2004

2010-04-09T12:22:00.000-07:00

More Dad

2010-03-29T20:41:00.001-07:00

Aunt Sara

2010-03-29T20:40:00.000-07:00

Father, Grandfather

2010-03-29T20:36:00.001-07:00

Father with Fish

2010-03-29T19:44:00.001-07:00

Sister with Mushrooms

2010-03-29T19:39:00.001-07:00

So Damn Homesick

2010-03-24T20:22:00.001-07:00

Google maps isn't doing it for me.

spaceface

2010-03-24T11:23:00.000-07:00

C-prints by Yoshi Sodeoka.

via BUMMER BLOG

Beautiful Sister

2010-03-24T11:14:00.001-07:00

Thanks for reading, Marg!

Glasses Pinhole Camera

2010-03-24T11:10:00.001-07:00

These glasses take two nearly-identical exposures with a wide-angle lens and a very tiny aperture. Made with help from Ed in the shop; photo credit to Sam Draisin.

Gum Bichromate Demo

2010-03-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

Tony Gonzalez, Jaclyn/curtain

Classmate Lucas B. and I are attempting to demonstrate the Gum Bichromate to the rest of our photo class, but we need to learn how to do it first! Anyone out there on the big bad world wide web have any experience with the process? Helpful hints? Tricksy tricks? Tippy tips?

Worst Job Ever : Being Avedon's Printer

2010-03-23T10:18:00.001-07:00

Joanna's Cone Bra Pinhole Camera

2010-03-22T17:42:00.000-07:00

Kalan's Studio

2010-03-22T17:41:00.000-07:00

APAASTLTWLAT #3

2010-03-20T17:07:00.000-07:00

Cecily Brown, The Fugitive Kind

Cocteau Twins - Heaven or Las Vegas

APAASTLTWLAT, part 2

2010-03-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

Edouard Manet, Dejuner sur l'herbe

Nick Drake - From the Morning

A Painting and a Song to Listen to While Looking at It

2010-03-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

David Hockney, Pool with two figures

Bauhaus - All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

Mom & Dad

2010-03-17T10:40:00.001-07:00

house, train, car

2010-03-13T08:38:00.000-08:00

moustache + fangs

2010-03-10T15:08:00.000-08:00

A portrait of this blog's most supportive reader. Thanks garbanzo bean!

august

2010-03-10T07:16:00.001-08:00

look up!

2010-03-10T07:06:00.001-08:00

the uncommanding view

2010-03-09T09:14:00.000-08:00

a.m. superhero

2010-03-09T09:07:00.000-08:00

tiny perfect world

2010-03-08T16:47:00.000-08:00

Van Dyke

2010-02-23T12:19:00.000-08:00

Christopher James, Ferris Wheel & Corpse

Platinum/Palladium

2010-02-23T11:55:00.000-08:00

Gertrude Kasbier, Blessed Art Thou Among Women

Laura Bennet, Cass in the Big Coat

The Gum Bichromate Process

2010-02-23T11:16:00.000-08:00

Tony Gonzalez, Rachel/nail polish

Cheryl Harmeling, Brynmore

Potassium/Ammonium + Bichromate Salt + gum arabic/gelatin/glue/starch. Apply in mixture to a substrate; let dry.

Fourth Project: The Kiss*

2009-12-20T22:22:00.000-08:00

I shot several couples kissing. Every other take, I would ask one half of the couple to step back while the other half held their position. I sought to create a new image of intimacy be removing one critical element from the embrace we've seen thousands of times before.

*Hey, Pipo. Sorry that these scans, and those that follow, are nowhere near clean or color-corrected. I don't have the software in Vermont to whip these files into shape.

Side Project: Seaside Masquerade

2009-12-20T22:07:00.000-08:00

I visited a friend in Maine. We thought it would be funny to take a bunch of touristy pictures in Acadia National Park wearing an old beat-up cat mask that I got at an Ohio thrift store. We became very adept at using hand signals to coordinate the donning of the mask at the taking of the photograph. None of our fellow tourists were as intrigued as we wanted them to be.

BONUS: Said friend, photographed at the back patio she and her friends made from scratch a week prior.

Third Project: Shit Luck

2009-12-20T21:59:00.000-08:00

I got my fortune read by three psychics at a convention in Valley City, OH and acted out the most bummerific parts of each on film. These images were first presented as slides, viewed through magnifying loops on a light table. Each bad fortune constitutes the piece's title. I aimed to create intimate, fleeting, seductive images that contrast the blunt and dooming messages that accompany them.

Your first marriage will end in divorce.

Your mother will die in the next three years.

You will miscarry in the month of May.

Side Project: Hometown Parallelograms

2009-12-20T21:53:00.000-08:00

Shot at my parents's house in Vermont. So this is what light looks like coming through a real window.

Second Project: Charlotte on Elm Street

2009-12-20T21:50:00.000-08:00

A formal study of a nude body situated in an unfurnished, undecorated space. With so many typically available signifiers stripped from the scene, I was curious in what moods could be conveyed by composition and gesture alone.

Studies for Second Project

2009-12-20T21:46:00.001-08:00