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.
When artist, Isidro Blasco finished his piece for Lafayette, I had the pleasure of sitting down with him and discussing his work. He constructed a 3-Dimensional structure of the NYC skyline and placed graffiti in the sky. The work is quite interesting as it captures your attention. When asked what inspired his work, he replied, “ I have no inspiration.” He said he has the same idea in all his work, which is to capture the way we look at life. His response surprised me, but he then went on to say, “ I like to have many layers to a project.” Blasco feels that art should have some depth to it, but then later retracts his statement and says, “Actually, art just needs to be attractive because art is a spectacle.”
I had never thought as art as a spectacle of such, but it is true, you want the viewer to walk past you work, but also feel an inclination to look back and examine it. Blasco’s city sculpture does just that and when asked why he put the graffiti in the sky, he replied, “ It is a characteristic or New York City and adds a historical context.” He is right, NYC is well known for unique graffiti murals around the city and the beauty of Blasco’s structure is its subtle use. Despite Blasco’s handywork and technical knowledge, he insits that “if you try to teach art, you end up destroying it.”
His advice to the Lafayette students is to “look for things that you really like, don’t listen to any body. We are all different and you have to compete with so many other forms of expression. If your work is not different, you will not be good and the only way it can be different if it comes from you.” Isidro Blasco is humorous, incredibly talented and inspirational. His work transcends traditional photography and sculpture and pushes boundaries while creating new ones. Isidro Blasco’s only request was ” I hope my work does not end up as bathroom art, I saw some art in the bathroom and I dont want it to be mine”
We promise you Isidro, it will not.
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.
Gary Shneider Visits Photo I class
Gary visits with a Digital Photo I class to answer questions after his Artist Talk.
http://www.thelaf.com/a-e/lisa-kereszi-visiting-artist-1.2814215
Last Fall, photographer Lisa Kereszi spend 5 days at Lafayette meeting with students and working on a project. She will be returning for the second half of her residency in March 2012 and will give an Artist talk on Wednesday March 7, 2012 at 4:15pm in Willaims Center for the Arts, Room 108. Imogen Cain (2012) interviewed Lisa to find about more about her process and her photographs:
1) Where do you get your inspiration from and who are your influences?
I think I get a lot of inspiration just from the world around me, and also the Southeastern PA world I grew up in – the suburbs of Philly, but not the Main Line. I also am an avid collector of old photos, ephemera, drawings, postcards. So, I draw a lot of inspiration form that. My photography is also an act of collecting, or scavenging, saving things for disappearance, in a way. I am also very indebted to the work of Walker Evans, whose trail I sniffed out while in the Easton area. I visited some of the sites he photographed back in 1935 when he passed through your area. This is part of why I was so interested to come to Lafayette to be an artist-in-residence. My Eastern European great-grandparents settled in Bethlehem, and raised my grandfather in the shadow of the same steel mill Evans photographed so starkly from the hill of St. Michael’s Cemetery. I had known that image the whole time I was a student and practitioner of photography, but had no idea I had such a personal connection to the place. This past visit, during the 1st part of my residency, I was able to make an interesting picture of the stacks reflected in my family’s front screen door on East 3rd Street. Other photographers whose work I feel connected to are Robert Frank, Brassai and Eugene Atget. I even share a birthday date with one of them!
2) What was it like to work for Nan Goldin?
It was a wonderful learning experience for a 21-year-old right out of college, practically. I recall distinctly sitting in my dorm room at Bard, paging through her book, the Ballad of Sexual Dependency, telling my then-boyfriend that I hoped to get a job working for her. Then, I sort of lucked into it. I had no idea about the big art world I was stepping into. I met John Waters and Philip Lorca diCorcia, and many of Nan’s friends who famously peopled her iconic pictures from the 70’s and 80’s: David Armstrong, Sharon, Bruce. Besides seeing how a well-known artist functions on a day-to-day basis, I got to assist her and be present while the exhibition and catalog for her retrospective at the Whitney, I’ll Be Your Mirror, was being put together. I also got private, up-close access to her files of original slides, most of which have never been seen by the public. Her work definitely influenced my use of light and color. I was drawn to her in the first place, so there must have been an artists connection there to begin with.
3) Why do you prefer analog photography?
I like the way color and light is rendered on film, or maybe I am just sued to it, and it works for me! also, when I do use a 4×5, the movements and focus detail that camera affords is unbeatable at $5 a shot, rather than buying an outrageously-expensive digital back. However, I am actually in sort of a transitional phase, testing and trying out a few digital cameras with Zeiss lenses to try to make the plunge into mostly shooting digitally. The work flow is just so much better with digital – no more hours and dollars spent scanning hundreds of negatives a year.
What tools and camera do you use?
I have been behind for years in making workprints, with a backlog of edited contacts sitting there waiting to be dealt with, something I only can get back on top of when teaching and shooting and working dies down. Life gets in the way of art sometimes. Digital is also much better in low-light situations. I realized that last summer on a trip to Berlin w/ my fiance, who is also a photographer. He was able to make pictures w/o asking for permission in many places we visited, because he was using the Mark 2, which is great in darker places. I had my Mamiya 7, which only opens up to f4. A flash would have caused too much distraction, and could have gotten us kicked out of some places. The year prior to that, in Italy (a country famously difficult to wade through bureaucracy in for getting permission.) That said, staring at the computer screen this much is wearing at my eyes.
4) What is your process for making work?
I go somewhere that I am drawn to, for one reason or another (subject, personal connection, history) and just make pictures by myself. On a tripod w/ natural light indoors, or just roving on foot if outdoors. My interior pictures are made with long exposures necessary to attain good depth of field at f8 or 11, and I only add flash if I really need to fill in a shadow. I don’t do any post-production besides basic color correction, burning and dodging. I get into a zone where I am just following my nose, waiting for that next great thing, lit in a certain way, to hit me in the face when I come around a corner. It’s so much about that moment of discovery, and then the minutes after, in which I study the place or thing and move around it, trying to figure out how best to make it express itself in a meaningful, poetic way. I hate previewing a place, or returning to the scene of the “crime.” Pictures in which I have some sense of a preconceived notion almost always fall flat.
5) What is your favorite kind/type of photography (portraiture, landscape, abstract etc.)?
I guess details in the landscape and also interiors, as far as what I do. I am interested in some abstraction, in the way I pull a scene out of it’s real setting and possibly give it a new meaning. I love how a floor can often flip up and create cognitive dissonance when you look at the print up on the wall, vertically. In other people’s work, though, I love street photography, like that of Garry Winogrand and Tod Papageorge, whose work just always floors me. (It’s harder than it looks, kids.) I also love the intense portraiture of August Sander and Diane Arbus, and local hero Judith Joy Ross, even though I don’t make work anything like that myself.
6) What did you do while you were here and what do you plan to do when you return? What is your relationship with this area?
This goes back to my original answer. In March, I plan to retrace some of Evans’s steps, and try to locate the site of the Joe’s Auto Graveyard he also shot back in the Thirties. I have two leads, one better than the other, but I don’t know how the researchers knew the sites for 100% sure; I tend to be a stickler and need proof. I had no luck at your local historical societies in locating a business by that name in town records. However, perhaps one of the sites will be close enough in spirit, at least. Not much is as it was. My reason for being so obsessed with this location is that I will put to bed a book this March about my own family’s auto junkyard, which was also named Joe’s, oddly enough. That grandfather who I mentioned in Bethlehem started the business in 1949, and I imagine that he and his father might have gone to Evans’s Joe’s when my grandfather was a child. Who knows, maybe it gave him the idea. I know that he started out by helping his dad support the family by collecting and selling scrap from the street, something I know my dad does today, from time to time. The book is called Joe’s Junk Yard, and will be published by Damiani for a Fall 2012 release.
Lisa’s work can also be seen in this recent release of the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2011/12/goings-on-about-town-2011.html
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