My Photo Life: 2021

Sunday, December 19, 2021

Big News: Upcoming Solo Exhibition!

I'm so happy to announce that at the end of February 2022, I'll have a solo exhibition of my 4 a.m. work at the Concordia University Gallery in St. Paul! I'll have a lot more about this over the next few weeks and months, so keep checking back for more details.

Here's a handful of images from the last few weeks of prep work:

Early October: I sat down in the faculty office space at the University of Minnesota for a few hours of planning.

Notes, image lists, and gallery maps to be working with.

After I put together a 3-page list ranking most of my 4 a.m. images back in August (something I'll never show publicly), then I started thinking of ways to use the gallery space: did I want to just show my best 4 a.m. photos? Did I want to highlight different mini-series within the larger 4 a.m. series? I currently have 4 different possible mock-ups of the gallery layout.

More recently, I gathered all my 4 a.m. files in one place and made 5 large contact sheets of images:

Nearly 120 images from my 4 a.m. series cut out and ready to sort.

(I made the contact sheets on some old CVA paper - nostalgia!)

Then last weekend I really started planning in earnest. I had my stack of images ready to sort in a big open quiet area at Hamline University:

It almost sounds silly, but it took hours of work (and pacing back and forth) to get to this point.

The upper left are images I wanted to print large and have framed, the lower left are images I'd frame in some "normal" sized wooden frames (13x19 images framed 22x28ish), the upper middle are images I'd be putting in 24" black metal frames, the lower middle are images I'd like to print larger (24x30 overall) and have behind glass, the upper right is a mini "social justice" series around George Floyd's murder and the Mpls riots, and the lower right are alternatives. All-in-all, that was 120 images cut down to 45-55 for the exhibition.

The work continued at home: our dining room table looked like this for about 5 days.

Then a few days ago, I headed to the DSB on the West Bank of the University of Minnesota. This is a big printing room right across the hall from where I worked and taught from 2005 to 2011, so it was a bit sentimental to be back:

Looking east in the DSB.

Looking west back to the printer I was using in the corner.

Waiting on my first image to print: 24" wide and 32" long.

Large prints.

More prints.

My biggest print coming out: this one was 44" long.

Starting to wrap-up after 4 hours.

There are about 16 large prints wrapped up in there, all ready
to be secured between 2 pieces of foam core for the ride home.

That brings us to today. The prints are "drying" in my studio, and I hope to start framing in about 10 days.

I've had pieces in that gallery before, and if you are interested in seeing the space I have to fill, here are 3 posts that show it from a few years ago:

     - Photos from the "Rise" exhibition
     - A single panoramic image from that same show
     - Some images from "The Art of Teaching" which shows the vertical height in parts of that gallery

Stay tuned for more! There's a LOT of work that still needs to happen in the next 8 weeks! In the meantime, keep the evening of February 24, 2022 open if you are a local...

Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Finals Season

Thursday, December 09, 2021

"Open Studios 2021" at Hamline University

Last night was "Open Studios" at Hamline University. The Art Department and the Digital Media Arts (DMA) Department show off their student work and their spaces throughout the university. I stopped by with one of my sons to look around:

Printmaking studio.

A printmaking joke.

A painting classroom upstairs.

Upon entering the DMA area, the first room is for audio work.

The new classroom that I'll be teaching in.

Dave talking with a student.

Another classroom view from near the instructor's station. Laptops and soldering irons abound.

Curt in the DMA printshop, doing some letterpress work with guests.

Book cover design.

Movie poster design.

The new DMA space is right next to a large former lounge space (down the hall on the left of this image).

Design work.

There's another computer lab down there that I didn't photograph (used for more programming-like classes), along with a large alcove that has two 3D printers in it.

Saturday, December 04, 2021

"Open Studios" is on Wednesday

I was at Hamline earlier today getting some files ready for my department head, and I saw these signs up all over our corner of campus:

DMA has just moved to the Bush Student Center in the lower left of this map.

On the Digital Media Art's Printshop window.

If you're around, check out the "Open Studios" event put on by the Fine Arts and the Digital Media Arts Department on Wednesday night. (Oh, and snoop around that DMA link for a moment to find my bearded headshot from last year.)

Monday, November 08, 2021

A North Shore Trip with my Holga

Last month, my family and I headed up along the North Shore of Lake Superior to visit some State Parks. My boys and I had been to most of Minnesota's State Parks, and we just had a few more along the North Shore to hit before having been to all 73 parks. I brought my plastic Holga camera on the trip as well. My boys got their last stamps in their "passport" books at Tettegouche State Park making it official that they'd been to every MN State Park.

Here's a quick chronological look at our trip through the blurry eyes of my Holga.

[click each image to enlarge]