Field Trip to UOP to View Senior Projects

We visited UOP to review senior projects for candidates for a BFA. We were hosted by Jennifer Little who also provided a tour of the photo facilities. In addition to digital photography, art projects included ceramics, oil paints, silk screening and sculpture. We were fortunate to have met three of the seniors. Two were collaborating on a advertising campaign for the Brickyard on campus with a series of large silk screens. Yolanda Cunningham, the other student artist we met, discussed her powerful sculptures titled "Drug Addiction." Yolanda is a reformed addict who is using art as a medium to get the word out to the world about drugs emphasizing marijuana as a gateway drug to crack cocaine and other drugs. Her life-size plaster images of drug users and the skeleton inside a giant plastic inflated crack pipe were very strong.

Ms Little showed us several of her pieces. She starts with a large format film camera, scans the negative, then prints digitally. The body of work involved landscape images taken from under bridges and culverts. The prints will be shown at Stanford University beginning July 8, 2010. She also has a second body of work titled, "Sightseers" that will be on display at UOP in August 2010...both a must see.

Just returned from four whirlwind days in NYC. We stayed in Hells Kitchen in Manhattan just a few blocks from Times Square and Central Park, which provided me a wealth of photographic opportunities. Everywhere you look - shapes, texture, contrast and color.

I spend a couple of hours at the Museum of Modern Art to view the latest photography exhibits, visited the worlds largest adult candy store -B&H Photo and Video on Ninth Ave (something like Fry's on steroids), took a "three hour tour" around the island (didn't see the Skipper nor Gilligan), and, of course, visited Ground Zero.

A memorable moment occurred when we took the C train to Patsy's Pizza (a favorite family eatery)on the West Side at West 74th St and emerged from the subway at the foot of The Dakota where former Beatle John Lennon was gunned down in December 1980. (I saw the Beatle's last live concert ever at Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966)

Across the street from The Dakota in Central Park is Strawberry Fields with this mozaic...

Horizontal Diptychs

Vertical Diptychs