Let's get this thing started!

The first residency was an amazing foray into all things art; artist talks, graduating student presentations, gallery visits, elective seminars and a critical theory course all combined to create an immersive experience in the theory and making of art. As the last number of months had me getting a little depressed about my industry (3d animation and graphics) I felt a distinct sense of (if you’ll forgive the bad analogy) suddenly firing on all cylinders, akin to a car that’s been chugging along on only two of it’s four cylinders. I came into the AIB program thinking that it might help me in a couple of areas related to my life and career, and I now see that it will change my life forever and I can see four or five ways in which it can have a positive impact on my both my life and career.

[ I was particularly motivated by the urgings of Stuart Steck, our Critical Theory teacher, who encouraged us to look at things anew and take the time to stop and really take things in, as I’ve found myself unavoidably entranced by all manner of visuals I encounter in my daily life. I was also motivated by some of the directives from Judith Barry, Program Director, as she not only encouraged us to try new things but to make sure that we master the new mediums that we attmpt to work with. ]

In my newfound energy about the art world I’ve been researching artists, art movements, authors, theory and all manner of related things (philosophy, quantum physics, blah, blah, blah…) and I’m happy about the reading and research I’ll be doing, especially as it relates to the things I’ll be making in this coming six months.

My next job is to synthesize all these thoughts and urges into a concrete list of projects I’ll be doing for the studio component of this coming semester.

We’re encouraged to try new media and approaches in our first semester, so I have an overly ambitious list of projects in sculpture, 3d graphics, 2d graphics, animation, video and interactive performance. One of the program requirements is that we find a mentor who is an established artist, and needless to say it’s not easy to address all of my project ideas with one artist. I’d started looking into local painters, to hopefully get input on light and shadow as relates to my 3d still image work, but that seemed like a woefully underwhelming range of feedback for the entire body of work I’ll be doing. I couldn’t help but harken back to our visit the to the Addison Gallery of Art, which featured a retrospective of forty years of work by William Wegman. I was amazed to see the range of photography, videos, stop motion animation, paintings and illustration encompassed in his work. This was the type of mentor I needed, as surely he could give me input on the entire scope of project work I’ll be doing. More importantly, the disarming and whimsical humor in his work struck a chord with me, as I saw similarities to many of the things I’ve done over the past decades. So, to make a long story a little less long, I began my endeavor to contact William Wegman, and after a brief email exchange he agreed to begin mentoring me in September. Until then, it’s mostly a matter of addressing the process of defining and realizing my project goals.