Exhibition Review - Kevin Kremler

Kevin Kremler is an artist from UNR  who recently had his exhibition in the Sheppard Fine Arts Gallery in early April. His exhibition was titled Postcards from the Grey Area and featured 4 distinct pieces of work. The first was a sort of photo booth that took a picture of the observer as if they were Norman Rockwell painting a self portrait. The camera then printed out a postcard for the viewer to keep, the digital copies were for Kremler to keep. Also in the exhibition was a crayon drawing, an installation of small TVs with images of an x-rayed skull, and a see-saw like structure involving sand. Kremler likes to make work that challenges people’s common perception of art. He likes to show people that there are all different kinds of art that can be appreciated in different ways. I really enjoyed the concept of the giant crayon piece as a postcard. Someone expressed concern that the piece could get destroyed through the mail, but that is really all a part of the project, since it is an oversized post card. To learn more about Kremler’s work visit www.unrtist.com

Progress Critique 3

I've started with some animation, and here is what I have so far:

Progress Critique #2

This week, I created the first two graphics in Photoshop. Here they are:
Spirituality:

 Home:

My next step will be to create the other two, and then bring them into Adobe After Effects and animate each of them separately, then intertwine all of them.

Artist Lecture - Barbara Davidson

Barbara Davidson is a photojournalist for the Los Angeles Times who recently came and lectured at UNR on March 29. She was being presented with Frank McCulloch Courage in Journalism award for her photo series called “Caught in the Crossfire”. The photo series chronicled Los Angeles gang violence, but showed the subjects of her photos were the families that were not directly affiliated with gangs, yet were still effected by gang violence. Her photos told a powerful story about the people in Los Angeles, and how normal the gang violence is for them, it’s almost a way of life. The photos were done in all black and white, and showed portraits of people, a lot of the time children, who had been injured by stray bullets, or families that had lost loved ones. She said that the subjects she photographed were more than willing to help her with her project, because the families want to talk about their loved ones because they recognize that they are often forgotten but the community. Davidson decided to do this piece because she felt that this was a story that most times goes unreported in Los Angeles. She says she realizes that her story is not easy to talk about or to listen to, but it is an important story to needed to be told. “It’s really hard to tell these kinds of stories, which is why many people don’t,” said Davidson. To see Davidson’s work please visit www.LATimes.com/victims

Progress Critique #1 - Research

After developing my ideas fully about how I want to accomplish this project, I created a project calendar to keep me on track up until the final due date on 5/8. Here is the calendar:

For this stage in my project, I decided research of all the tools I will be using would be best. I completed some of the Lynda.com tutorials, including tutorials on Adobe Flash and After Effects. After researching both animation softwares I decided to go with After Effects. I've also experimented with Eyecon, trying to figure out how it works and how I will attempt to use it for my final product. I've also considered the sound that I will be using for the animation, and decided I want Eyecon to control the sound instead of the video. So instead of laying a soundtrack on the video file of each animation, I will upload sounds into Eyecon - clips of my favorite songs, sound effects of my life, clips of different people talking, readings of my favorite quotes, etc. These sounds will be randomly changing as a person moves across the space. In the calendar as well as my original idea, I said I would create 4 separate videos that will tie together and each video will change according to Eyecon. Now I will create one single fluid animation that will loop through all four canvases, and the sounds will be randomized.