Devorah Sperber @ SUNY Ulster

DEVORAH SPERBER
Spring 2011 Visiting Artist

Devorah Sperber has been selected as the Visiting Artist at SUNY Ulster for the 2011 spring semester. Going to this event and writing a page response to her work and talk will count as an extra credit for my Photo 1 Spring 2011 class.

VISITING ARTIST DEVORAH SPERBER
March 17- April 15

Opening Reception and Slide Lecture
Thursday, March 17, 2011
7:00 p.m., Vanderlyn Hall, Student Lounge

Exhibition on View
March 17 – April 15, 2011
Muroff Kotler Visual Arts Gallery
Vanderlyn Hall, Stone Ridge Campus

Devorah Sperber

Devorah Sperber was born in 1961 and raised in Detroit, Michigan and Denver, Colorado. From 1979 to 1981, she attended the Art Institute of Colorado, Denver, and in 1987, she received her BA from Regis University, Colorado. She has had numerous exhibitions including Mass MoCA, (2008), and a one-person exhibition,The Eye of the Artist: The Work of Devorah Sperber, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York (2007).

An Installation of Work by Devorah Sperber

Artist’s Statement

"My current body of work consists of sculptures assembled from thousands of ordinary objects - spools of thread, marker and pen caps, flower-power stickers, map tacks, chenille stems (a.k.a. pipe cleaners), faceted beads, and Swarovski crystals. The imagery is derived from digital photographs that I manipulate and translate into "low-tech" pixels.

While many contemporary artists employ digital technology to create high-tech works, I strive to "dumb-down" technology by using mundane materials and low-tech, labor-intensive assembly processes. I place equal importance on the recognizable image as a whole and on how individual parts function as abstract elements. Therefore, I select materials based on their aesthetic and functional characteristics as well as their capacity for an interesting and often contrasting relationship with the subject matter.

The thread-spool works are often installed so that viewers first perceive the spools of thread as a random arrangement of colorful cylinders. It is only after the spools are viewed through an optical device, such as a clear acrylic sphere or convex mirror that the recognizable image emerges. The viewing spheres (or convex mirrors) shrink or condense the thread spool "pixels" into recognizable images while also rotating the representation 180 degrees. This shift in perception functions as a mechanism to present the idea that there is no one truth or reality, thus emphasizing subjective reality over an absolute truth." - from the Museum of Arts and Design website.

Mona Lisa by Devorah Sperber

Learn more about her work here.

Please attend if you are available...

Visit & Lecture at SUNY Ulster from:

Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Chairman of the Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art at the Met.

Monday April 25^th.

11am.

Student Lounge

Topic TBA

Lecture by Jamie Davis & Rachel Papo

This Sunday, Feb. 27 at 11am

The Center for Photography at Woodstock

59 Tinker Street, Woodstock

845.679.9957

free!!!

image by Rachel Papo

Students, this is a great opportunity to hear two regional and successful photographers speak about their work and experiences. I highly recommend attending! I will be there and hope to see a number of you there too!!

You can use this event toward an extra credit for my class.

more info available here.

Welcome Spring 2011!!!

A warm welcome to the photography students of the Spring 2011 semester at SUNY Ulster. I look forward to a creative and productive semester!

Please check in on this blog every week to look for new posts. Also, explore the links to the right. There is so much photography to see on the web!!

You can also look to past posts to see what former students made in this class.

Best,
your professor, Elizabeth Unterman

Awosting Alchemy-- January submissions

Awosting Alchemy is accepting submissions for its January issue. Submissions are free and a great opportunity for you to utilize work from your final projects!

This is a fantastic way to get your photography out into the community and add to your resume at the same time!

See this link for submission info.

Also follow that link to see the inaugural issue which came out last month.

Portrait/Self-Portrait Critique

Assignment #3 for Photography 1, Portraiture & Self-portraiture, was reviewed last week in the class's second full class critique session. Everyone did a great job with the assignment and with the technical aspects of using Photoshop and ink-jet printing.

Issues discussed during the crit included:

what defines a portrait?

what is the difference between a portrait and a snapshot of a person?

Is it easier to take pictures of people you are close to?

Why is it important to turn the camera onto ones self?

How does lighting change the mood of a person in a photograph?

What metaphors exist within a portrait?

All pictures above taken by Becca

All pictures above taken by Skeats

Story-telling with Images- Resources for Class

Class, here are links to artists working with a series of images that construct a story about place, a person, time, history, experience and/or anything else you can imagine! Please review to help you decide what story you will tell for your final.

VII Magazine

Magnum Photos

Lauren Greenfield

Rebecca Norris Webb

Alex Webb

Spencer Finch

Elinor Carucci

Lucas Foglia

Discovering portraits...

This week's class was dedicated to exploring portraits under controlled lighting. They photographed one another with a 2-tungsten light kit.

Students have been working on their portrait assignment for a few weeks and have been contemplating what a portrait is exactly. This is one of the harder questions we have come across because there is not a clear and definitive answer. Portraiture is something different to each person and is constantly evolving into new stages of its existence.


To gain better perspective, we looked at many artists working within portraiture like Dawoud Bey, David Hilliard, Annie Lebovitz, Richard Avedon, and Elinor Carucci to name a few. We also discussed the many types of portraiture that exists--like environmental, documentary, fashion, editorial-- and the many different reasons one might have for taking a photograph of a person in this way.


The conversation carries on. Please post any comments regarding the topic of portraiture for students to read and discuss.

Re-imagining iconic photography

As art students, one of the best ways to learn a new process, technique, or style is to look at other artwork for influence and ideas.

For this assignment students were asked to choose a photograph that they admire and recreate it in their own creative vision. The top image is the original photograph and the bottom image is the student's work.

Enjoy!!!


MARY KATE (original by Bruce Davidson)



AMBER (original by Ansel Adams)



ARIEL (original by Man Ray)




BECCA (original by Ilse Bing)




BRAIDEN (original by Helmut Newton)

CAILEE


ERICA (original by Mary Ellen Mark)


JENNIFER (original by John Baldessari)



JOHN (original by Walker Evans)




LIAM (original photograph by Edward Weston)


MARIE (original photograph by Mary Ellen Mark)





SKEATS (original photograph by Torsten Blackwood/ Getty Images)