Artist Talk - Kevin Miyazaki

Kevin Miyazaki
Photographer
By: Kylee Diedrich

Recently Kevin Miyazaki spoke to students, faculty, and friends of UWM at the Artist Now! lecture series. Miyazaki discussed his fine art and commerce work from his beginnings to his current work.  I found the way he talked about his work to be inspiring.  His vision is extremenly refined and without the drama that young artists grapple with as they are learning.  Miyazaki is a talented photographer, with a lifetime of knowledge in the medium of photography.

The project I was drawn to the most was his project Perimeter.  I found the project particularly interesting because it loosely relates to my own senior thesis project.  He drove the scenic route around Lake Michigan photographing the people along the shores, as well as an image of the lake that day.  His approach is more narrow than my own concept, but I find his work to be one inspiration for where I could take my project in the coming years.  His photographs are beautifully quiet and thought provoking as they take the viewer along the shores of Lake Michigan.

Though Miyazaki's project was the result of a commission, I chose my senior thesis based on the connection I have to the lakes, and what I find so interesting about them.  Miyazaki's project shows the variety and connectedness between the populations and people who live and depend on the fresh water of Lake Michigan.  The images share the variety in the lake, as well as the variety of people who utilize it daily.  I look up to Kevin Miyazaki and use him as inspiration for my future as a graduating senior. 

Field Trip - Milwaukee Art Museum Herzfeld Center

Milwaukee Art Museum
Herzfeld Center

by: Kylee Diedrich

On Wednesday, March 1st my photography class visited the Herzfeld Center at the Milwaukee Art Museum to view contemporary photography in an informal setting. The majority of the images were without frames or glass, directly from the storage files. We were able to be inches away from the museum's worthy collection. Our instructor and the Collections Manager chose images that were either historically important or cutting edge. Not often do students or the public get the chance to view work in such an intimate way.

The trip exposed us all to contemporary photographs and photographers who are working with new techniques or old techniques in a new manner.  We saw twenty-five images close up.  Some that I found most interesting were Robert Heinecken's A Case Study in Finding an Appropriate TV Newswoman, 1984 (Top Left); Marco Breuer's Untitled (C-784), 2008 (Top Right) ; and Christopher Russell's Explosion #26, 2014 (Bottom).

                                

                

Overall, the field trip to the Herzfeld Center to be a great way to expose us to the new ideas revolving around contemporary photography and the ways artists are developing the medium of photography, what it means, and what it can be in the future.  

Landscape - Penelope Umbrico

Landscape: Penelope Umbrico
By Deshawn Brown

Penelope Umbrico is an artist / photographer known for appropriating images found using search engines and picture sharing websites. Her work has been published in books, exhibited and she has received awards. She was born in Philadelphia in 1957 and graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design. She received her MFA from the School of Visual Art and PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York. Currently, she is a faculty member in the School of Visual Arts MFA Photography, video, and related Media Program and resides in New York City. Her work is in collections including International Center of Photography (NY), McNay Museum of Art (TX), Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), Museum of Contemporary Photography (IL), Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (CA), Museum of Modern Art (NY).

I feel her work,  is very simple. She doesn’t do anything on her own but search images on google, yahoo, etc. She then combines these images together into one whole rectangular collage. I understand that she wants to show the audience about how we  use the internet to consume and create materials over a period of time,but I wish there was a better outlook about the way they were captured.

Event Review Guerrilla Girls

Guerrilla Girls- MIAD Talk
By: Ryan Cindric

The Guerrilla Girls are female activist artists who first came together in 1985. The group has consisted of over 55 people with dedication ranging from a few weeks to over a few decades. They have kept their identity a secret all these years through the use of gorilla masks, its also goes well with their name (pause for chuckle).  The Guerrilla girls, in their own words, "undermine the idea of a mainstream narrative by revealing the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair. We believe in an intersectional feminism that fights discrimination and supports human rights for all people and all genders."

Going into the talk I only had a very limited idea of what the girls were all about, however my mind was blown by all of the different issues they shed light on. Throughout the duration of their talk the covered the basic background knowledge of themselves, but once we got into it ideas and issues started flying around like poop in the monkey enclosure. I had no idea that the art world was as corrupt as it was; museum board members having the museum buy their personal collections for millions of dollars. As well as this, i also never knew just how unrepresented female artists, and artists of color were in museums, sometimes not even having any representation at all. Lastly, the issue of women artists trying to make a living; it seems that to make a living, in the way that we picture some of the greats, you must be male; less than 3 % of artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 83% of nudes are women.

This was an incredibly eye opening talk into a world that i clearly don't know much about. I am incredibly thankful I had the opportunity to go and am also incredibly thankful that the Guerrilla Girls exist to expose the corruption and misrepresentation in the art world.

Landscape: Pedro David
By; Ryan Cindric

Pedro David is a Brazilian visual artist and photographer with a bachelors in journalism. He has been dedication himself to the interpretation of the relationship between people and their environment. In it's various forms and context. 

His series- Stone Men, is an interpretation of the daily life in the Brazilian northeastern outback; the inhabitants of that region, and their close relationship with the harsh nature. It's a highly hybrid culture, a mix with traditional values, pre-industrial primitive activities, and the globalized behavior. Stone Men are all of the people who inhabit this landscape, trying to understand their juxtaposition of the different times running in their moving environment. You can see how barren the landscape is, making the struggle for life one that we may never know.

His series- Things Falling From the Sky, is a series done in response to objects appearing near his apartment, he says,
 "I moved my home to a ground level apartment with two private cement areas, soon i noted, small things appearing everyday on the ground, some recur, i collect them."

It's interesting to think about all the small things on the ground that get overlooked, and how we can create an environment for them just by getting close and taking a photo with the right focus. It's also interesting how he manipulated these objects in their space, and the choices he made when setting them up. 

Commerce/Economics - Cristina de Middel

Cristina de Middel
By: Ryan Cindric

Born in Spain in 1975, Cristina de Middel made her way to the US where she received her MA in photography from the University of Oklahoma. Returning to Europe, she earned a Fine Arts degree in Photojournalism. She describes how she blended these two disciplines,

 "The magic of the darkroom really seduced me at the beginning. Later when I finished my studies in fine arts, I didn't feel I had much in common with contemporary art practice. I felt the message was too encoded and too far away from the audience, so I decided to make a more practical use of what I had learned."

From: Afronauts

By developing interesting visual stories within documentary form, Middel created her own photographic language.  Afronauts, describes Zambian science teacher, Edward Makuka, who decided to train the first African crew to travel to the moon in 1964. Middel gives viewers actual document facsimiles accompanied by fantastical narrative photographs and  

 through her unique interpretation of the story reinterprets an historical event. She explains,

 "I wanted to try and tell interesting stories with an interesting language within photography, but still within a documentary practice." 

From: Afronauts

I am truly envious of Middel's ability to create a project knowing exactly what she wants to achieve and executing it clearly. Middel's success is based high level of visual skill, book design and editing, no matter what project is she is working on. Middle stuns viewers with unexpected concepts and execution.

From: This is What Hatred Did