The Third Street Artist-In-Residence Program is a new program aiming to bring working artists/photographers into the Lafayette community.
Photographer and digital artist, Debbie Grossman will be visiting Lafayette the week of Oct. 20 for an artist residency. She will be giving a talk on Wed. Oct. 23 at noon in Williams 108, free and open to the public. She will also be meeting with Honors students and talking to various classes.
Learn more about Debbie’s work: www.debbiegrossman.com
This semester we had the pleasure of hosting Deanna Lawson . Lawson’s work focuses on the psychological, personal, political and historical experiences that are expressed through the body. Lawson brought a diverse and refreshing energy to Lafayette College.
During Lawson’s visit she met with senior thesis students and helped critique the progress of Digital Photography III students. 
The students loved Lawson’s advice, insight and most importantly, her honesty. This candor sentiment translates in her work, which she presented during her artist lecture. When she was not interacting with the students, Lawson worked on printing her own images from a recent trip down 
South.
The large format photos paired with a large print medium, allows for us to appreciate the detail in her vibrant portraits. Her images are beautifully constructed and tell the stories of the working class. During her artist talk she spoke about the process in which she chooses subjects to photograph, “I approach people in every day life that look interesting to me.” She approaches potential subjects and exchanges contact to schedule a photo shoot. Lawson’s process is unique in that she photographs her subjects in their own space. This intimacy reflects in her family portraiture, which is personalized and genuine, despite her subjects being strangers. Lawson is currently back at Lafayette shooting the local residents of
Easton, using the same selection process.
I was first introduced to Isidro Blasco last week when he gave a talk to the sculpture and Photo II classes. Although he is a world-renowned artist, having showed in China, Australia, Madrid and New York City, he is still humble and personable. When asked if he considers himself a photographer, he replied, ” I just have a good camera, go and shoot and hope for the best.”
In his formal artist talk on November 15th in the Williams Art Center, he showed us some of his most famous work. His latest piece is an Architectural Installation of a deconstructed lane-way showing in Sydney, Australia. The installation is the same size as the buildings it surrounds and fits in quite perfectly with its environment. Although it is not a perfect reconstruction, in terms of the placement of the photographs, it is so beautifully crafted and executed that the imperfection ironically adds a realistic element.
We also had the honor of seeing his film entitled “Elusive Here” which is a dream dramatization that references his life and career. He describes the film as “a narrative of my transitional moments.” He uses his deconstructive method to provide the viewer with different perspectives of a single event or idea. I believe one of the most intriguing and interesting parts of the film is when he “sees” his ex girlfriends from Spain, in women he encounters in the MoMA in NYC.
The beauty lies with a disconnect of the woman from the place he has met her. So the viewer is hearing the narration of how these women relate to his past lovers, but the scene is a solo shot of this new woman standing in front of a white wall. As the narration continues, she stands in character, unaware of the story being told. Periodically an image appears on the white wall behind the woman that is parallel to the narration. Blasco’s use of deconstruction, tells his story in such a beautiful and memorable way.
Isidro Blasco is the true definition of a versatile artist. He has found his strength and applied it many art forms. From his sculptures, to his films, to his architectural installations, he seems to be an artist of no boundaries.
We are proud and honored to have Isidro Blasco as our Third Street Artist- in- Residence and excited to see what work he does here at Lafayette College.
Isidro Blasco will be coming to Lafayette as an Artist-In-Residence from Nov. 8-16 to meet with students and to create art. While here, Isidro will be creating a project with the help of Lafayette students and faculty. Students will be given the opportunity to work with a practicing artist and to participate in his artistic process. Isidro will also be giving a lecture on Thursday November 15, 2012 at 12:00pm in Williams 108- free and open to the public.
Lafayette’s Professor Karina Skvirsky was among four selected artists (Melanie Baker, A.J. Bocchino, Marc Lepson, Karina Aguilera Skvirsky) at The Aperture Foundation’s “What Matters Now? Proposals for a New Front Page” interactive and emerging exhibit this past September. The artists were chosen because they each engaged the notion of the front page, its content or form in some way. Their works, “created between 2001 and 2007, not surprisingly addressed such events as 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The projects reinterpret the front page at a moment when our information age is passing into our days dominated by short and frequent bursts of information delivered by social media. Still, the artist’s hand emphasizes the importance of the local in reporting and receiving information as well as the transparency or bias of editorial directions, which has a history and a context” (Erin Donnelly). The show, curated by Fred Ritchin, was a huge success. You can read more about it here: http://aperture.org/whatmattersnow/about-what-matters-now/
Professor Skvirsky hung works from the A Nation Challenged series . Caves, Fear, First Phase, Snow, 2003. The series was made by scanning images and articles from the Nation Challenged Section of the New York Times that came out after Sept. 11, 2001. In this series Karina explores how the war is pictured and presented by the media as well as visual strategies inherent to digital technology (montage and the appropriation of images from the web). She digitally added Roadrunner icons and used its color palette to render the original war photographs, shifting their interpretation towards a familiar representation of the American landscape rather than a foreign one. She also removed text from the original articles to provide a new context for the images, replacing it with text that references the landscape and not the war. This emphasis on the landscape provides an alternative to viewing Afghanistan as enemy territory and suggests similarities with the Roadrunner Landscape. The titles of each image refer to the dates when the original photographs and articles were printed and each print is approximately 17 x 22 in. “Karina Aguilera Skvirsky’s manipulated images make those of the “newspaper of record” at once less sentimental, less alien and also more clearly fictive” (Erin Donnelly).
Deborah Willis also invited Professor Skvirsky to her round table session on Friday, September 16th at the Aperture Foundation with NYU students, Erin Donnelly, Lori Novak, and Fred Ritchin.
Check out this video of Professor Skvirsky talking about the work she hung and the facebook album of the exhibition below! http://aperture.org/whatmattersnow/2011/contributing-artist-karina-aguilera-skvirsky/
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Our first visiting artist of the 2011-2012 school year will be renown Indian artist, Atul Bhalla. He will be visiting Lafayette College on October 3rd- 5th. His visit will coincide with an exhibition of his work at the Grossman Gallery entitled “Water Works”, on display through October 15th. The exhibition includes a sculpture installation, photographs, video and watercolors. During his visit, Bhalla will visit with classes from various departments including Art, Religious Studies and Environmental Studies, meet with advanced students and give an Artist Talk open to the public.
Artist Talk: October 5, 2011, 4:10pm Williams 108
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