Mid-July I went to further my study of practicing ancient healing channels taught by master Sri Sw. Kaleshwar in Penukonda, India. The ashram is located a few hours ride outside of Bangalore, ( now sometimes spelled as Bengaluru.)
We were given permission to take photographs on the ashram grounds, but not to post on the internet, which I'm respecting.
So, I think of these as memos, mementos and memories of the coming and going, much in the monsoon rain, the short meanderings in the city, to and from........... a place that will remain a visual secret.
Photographs © Ellen Giamportone All rights reserved.
...was the title of a collaborative art exhibit that was put together on May 29 in a place called Cedar Grove. All I can say, without really looking it up on a map, was time in the car driving past Hillsboro, about a half an hour in some direction from Carrboro, NC which is where a few friends met up to go. Since I can't figure out how the hell to get the cursor to go down below the photos to say what's what here, I'll have to describe a few of the photos this way...(gotta say I hate the way this blog works...it's not user friendly to me.) Well, anyway, the guy at the table below is artist Ken Rumble. I've never met him.
This scene was found by following a pathway lined with a single row of shoes on either side leading to a large white wall constructed in a field with a door in the center. When you opened the door, this was the scene.....The artist made no contact with the viewer; it made me think of the recent experience of seeing Marina Abramovic a few weeks ago at MoMA, in NYC where she spent, was it 5 weeks, in residence 8 hours a day sitting in a chair across a table from whomever wanted to sit with her in a performance called "The Artist is Present." In that scenario, there was continual eye contact, or face to face contact between artist and each individual viewer. I'm not attempting to link these two pieces or Rumble's intention here, it's just that these two events happened to coincide in my sphere of traipsing around in the world of art lately. By the way, most of the shoes along the pathway were painted on, some had words and phrases painted on them. Many of the shoes in the pile seemed to also be painted.
Chance Murray, painter and musician. His paintings are fresh, bold, raw and what's truly amazing to me is that he just turned 20!
Photographs © Ellen Giamportone All rights reserved.
Sunrises and sunsets are simple guarantees for photo-ops. I'd say they're the best models in the world. You know where they'll be, when they'll be there, and they're free. But no matter how consistent they are, you have no idea what is going to happen when they do arrive. How overcast will it be? Mosquitoes, really? And for sunrises, the ever annoying, alarm clock.
These pictures were over two days and countless hits of the snooze button. Can I mention that the definition of sunrise is incredibly broad and covers a ton of time. The first day, the internet said 5:42 sharp. Lies. Sure it was starting to get light outside, but there was a solid hour and thirty minutes of wondering if the sun was going to come up today and if it had taken the day off just to spite me. It was worth the wait. The black and whites were a function of the waiting time the first day. I don't think that it worked here but there is something very special about being able to nail a sunrise/sunset scene in black and white. Eliminating the need for "pretty colors" and simply marveling at the sun's progression below the horizon (yes, the world is flat and the universe revolves around us, meh).
Quick things I learned. Slower shutter speed = more defined sun, and effects on the skyline. There was less of a chance for me-shaky-old-hands to screw up the crisp outlines of the sun creating a definitive golden border behind the clouds. Also, I enjoyed the natural vignettes created by the large amounts of light contrasted with the peripheral darkness. The top picture highlights that very well. Other than cropping and slight rotations, these pictures are as is. Just didn't feel like they needed that much editing, so why not go all natural? Enjoy. Also, we have lightbox working again, so click on the pics for more fun.
While roaming around in an antique/vintage market place in Greensboro, NC a few years ago, I occasionally noticed among the bric-a-brack stuff a doll or figurine catching my attention because of some odd or weird vibe that seemed eminate from within it. Obviously, the form and/or face objectified the sense of weirdness, but the energy of the form was heightened. Having my camera with me I began to shoot photographs of them; at home later, they got filed and put away in the hard drive and that was that. The next time I was down there again, a year later, I noticed a few more odd dolls and juxtapositions of them, so recorded them as well.
Fast forward to one of the local Art Walk Fridays a few months ago. I was in a crappy state of mind when wandering in an out of lord knows how many galleries and studio spaces that night, and got really cranky and judgemental with thoughts of how nothing was holding my attention long enough to even warrant stopping in front of what was on the wall....anywhere. Bored to distraction but for some good cheese I found to eat at one gallery, I left for home, grumbling and muttering to myself, "am I so numb nothing is getting through, or was the art as bland as it seemed to me?" I can be a total art snob ass, so it's hard to say.....and certainly I haven't changed the world of art history with anything I've done, but that's the way it went down.
When I got home, I thought about the creepy dolls in my hard drive, and driven by vitriol (is that the word?) I brought them out and feverishly started working on them long into the night, figuring, at least if you saw one of these fuckers blown up large peering out from up on a wall, it would make you stop and feel something, at least for a moment. I certainly know this idea of images is new, and shock factor is a cheap shot, but oddly, over the last few months, it's come to me that this body of images actually follow quite closely the night photographs of "Lifting the Veil of Night" that I've been doing for probably four years now.
It's all about concealment.
I'll get all talky about that in the next post.....for now, here are some of the "Trapped Spirits" that are gonna be blown up 24"x36" big on Kinko paper and t-pinned to the wall of Points of View Gallery in Raleigh some time in April.
