2008 year end thoughts

©Stella Kalaw

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founding fathers is still alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, Tonight is your answer.

President Elect Barack Obama, Grant Park- Chicago, IL

One word sums up 2008 for me: HOPE. I have never seen it manifest like it did this year especially with Barack Obama's historical journey to the White House. It was palpable everywhere. I have been moved on several occasions hearing stories of hope's power to ignite something inside us and make us reach for the impossible. At this moment in time, hope triumphed over cynicism and I am savoring it.

In my own life, it is hope that allows me to remain resolute in creating the work I believe in regardless whether it finds an audience or not. When I think back five years ago when the odds were stacked against me, it was hope that kept me going. I continued to move forward, slowly building my personal projects over a long period of time. And some of that steadfast work has paid off. I am truly thankful for all the wonderful opportunities that came my way this year and to everyone who believed and supported me.

The road is always uncertain in this photographic journey but I know that hope will carry me through as I welcome the new year.

Graciela Iturbide: El Bano de Frida

Publisher: Punctum, Rome

Publisher's Description

In 2005, the bathroom of Casa Azul, Frida Kahlo’s private home, was reopened for the first time since her death 51 years ago. On this occasion Graciela Iturbide embarked on a voyage of discovery of the Mexican artist’s private life, documenting the fundamental “witnesses” of her human and artistic career during this week-long “journey”: medical supplies, artificial limbs, corsets, hospital gowns and stuffed animals, a portrait of Stalin and her hot-water bottle. Often paint-soiled, these objects testify to Frida’s inability to separate her private and artistic lives and to extricate her physical pain from her creative solace. The fusion of these elements is symbolised by her bathroom, a central place in her life, where she started each day and to which she often returned, using it as the setting for several of her works (including her famous self-portrait in the bath).The first part of Graciela Iturbide’s project – a colour version with a more documentary slant – has been displayed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. The photographs published in this book are the result of a second “dialogue” between the two Mexican women, which took place in 2006. In this encounter, the photographer sought to establish intimate contact with the artist, coming face to face with her legend and her identity, which she has documented in 12 black-and-white photographs, ending with a self-portrait in a pose adopted by Frida in one of her famous works.

Source: Photoeye

Ed's Place

Holiday Stories

It's a few days before Christmas and the spirit of the holiday season has not really hit me. It has been like this for a couple years now. Could it be that where I live, there are hardly any of the physical manifestations of Christmas? For instance, a single wreath visibly hangs in one door and a lone picture of Snoopy wearing a Santa Claus hat is displayed on a window amidst a row of town homes along my street. Coming home from work at night, I would look up at my neighbors' windows and noticed only a handful of Christmas lit trees usually obscured behind curtains or blinds. Even the lamp posts around town were bare. I never paid much attention to holiday decor until I noticed its absence.
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Last week on my day off, I had a huge craving for hot chocolate. Out of a whim, I drove a few blocks from where I live to Charles Chocolates so I could sample their product. However, the lady behind the counter told me that they temporarily ceased making the drink. Having heard this further fueled my craving. Scharffenberger was right down the street and so I made my way to their store. I immediately saw a stainless steel percolator on the counter to my left with a small sign that read "hot cocoa." My eyes gleamed. There were no cups to be found so I approached the cashier to ask for one and she quickly began opening and closing drawers behind her. She apologized for not having a stack readily available at the counter. I waited patiently as she shuffled and shifted more things around until she was able to find one. I walked back where the percolator was located and pressed the lever down. A small burst of steam escaped from the opening then out came the velvety concoction. I held the cup to my face and savored its aroma before taking a sip. The sweetness was just right and the pleasant bitter after taste from the cocoa was throughly enjoyable. Although the price was steep, I bought a can for T & I to enjoy during the holidays.
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In the office, L was called the cafeteria Nazi, a reference to the famous Seinfeld episode about a Soup Nazi in New York City. She was relentless when it came to enforcing the rules. If someone forgot their meal card, she refused to serve them lunch. You had to know what you wanted when your turn came to pick your lunch items. Otherwise, she would give out a sigh of impatience and would let you know you are holding up the line.

D had a great story about her from a few years ago. L mistakenly thought he was part of the AV crew that was laid off a few weeks ago. She suspected him of trying to sneak in the cafeteria for a free lunch wearing a uniform as a disguise to gain entry. D had to drag his supervisor to prove to her he was legitimately employed with the company.

When she saw me in the hallway, she would always say, "Kamusta na, anak? Kumain ka na ba?" (How are you child, have you eaten already?) I would politely say I'm fine and often reminded her that I usually ate at a later time. I don't know why she was nice to me. Could it be that I made sure I always followed the rules (for fear of embarassment) and that I smiled a lot as a weapon to diffuse her rants?

This morning, HR blasted an email informing all employees that she died last Friday. She was struck by a car while she was on her way to work. Ironically, she did not use the crosswalk according to the newspaper report. She was taken to the hospital but never made it out of intensive care. The Filipinos I talked to at work were shocked by the news. It was hard to fathom especially because I just saw her last week and we exchanged our usual pleasantries. Before ending my shift, I briefly sat with R in her office and expressed my shock. I was saddened that it had to happen during the holidays. "We've been telling her she should retire already and just enjoy her life but she didn't want to give up her job." R said to me in tagalog. She worked for the company for 19 years. Life sure is short. I zipped up my jacket and walked the cold night more determined than ever to continue making my goals and dreams a reality and to savour every single day of my life. I briefly looked up and expressed a silent gratitude to the universe.

2009 The Photo Project: Editing Text and Image Workshop by Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb

From Stella Kalaw

Fine Arts Work Center
Providence, MA
Website

Workshop dates: August 2-7, 2009

Registration begins in January 2009

THE PHOTO PROJECT: EDITING TEXT&IMAGE
Alex Webb & Rebecca Norris Webb


This workshop is for photographers currently working on a long-term photographic project that they are passionate about. Over the week, participants will edit and sequence their photographs from this project (30-80 small prints), write an introduction, and work on a title.


Alex and Rebecca Webb, a creative team who often edit books and projects together including their upcoming first joint book, Violet Isle: A Duet of Photographs from Cuba, will show the class how to edit intuitively through an editing exercise, one-on-one encounters, and group edits. Participants will also try their hand at writing an introduction and a title, with feedback from the Webbs, who between the two of them, have written introductions and titles for some 10 photographic books.


Alex and Rebecca invite formers students to apply, but also welcome other photographers -- both professional and serious amateurs -- with long-term projects. The main emphasis in this workshop is on focusing and shaping a project one’s passionate about into a coherent whole. For some participants, this may result in a layout of a photographic exhibition; for others, it may result in a rough book dummy that photographers could use as a guide for one day designing a maquette (designed book dummy) to be shown to potential photo book publishers; for others, the project workshop may result in an edit of their project for a future self-published online book; and for others, it may produce a sequence of family photos or other personal body of work.


WHAT TO BRING:

--30-80 photo prints (5x7 or 8x10) of a long-term project. They can be either ink jet prints or cheap photographic prints, The quality of the print isn’t what’s important. We just need to see the image.

--Notebook or laptop to write the introduction and title


Lab fee $20 per person


Alex Webb, a member of Magnum Photos since 1976, has published seven books including Hot Light/Half Made Worlds, Under a Grudging Sun, Crossings: Photographs from the U.S. Mexican Border, and Istanbul: City of a Hundred Names, his most recent book. He has worked for many of the major publications including National Geographic, Life, New York Times Magazine, GEO, and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Hasselblad Foundation Grant, and the Leica Medal of Excellence. Webb’s work has been exhibited widely in the U.S. and Europe in museums such as the International Center of Photography, the High Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego.


Rebecca Norris Webb, originally a poet, had her first NYC solo exhibition at Ricco Maresca Gallery in 2006, the same year her first book, The Glass Between Us, was published. Her series, which uses text and images to explore the complicated relationship between people and animals in cities, has also been included in several group exhibitions, including "Why Look at Animals?" at the George Eastman House. Currently, she's working on a series in the American West, My Dakota, as well as the upcoming joint book, Violet Isle, with her husband and creative partner, Alex Webb. Rebecca edited Alex's two most recent books (Crossings and Istanbul) and teaches photography workshops with him around the world.

Family Spaces at the Silverlens Gallery, January 8-February 7, 2009

From Silverlens Gallery Press Release

Opening Reception: Thursday, January 8

Silverlens Gallery welcomes 2009 with a photography show by United States based artist Stella Kalaw. Over the last fifty years, the Filipino diaspora has altered the landscape of families and the relationships that bind. Kalaw, having left the Philippines over ten years ago, returns to show Family Spaces, a series of photographs of her immediate family members' homes all over the world. Continents apart, each home is a glimpse of interconnectedness through objects of the everyday Filipino. Worn tsinelas on a stair landing, a tabo floating in a balde, the Sacred Heart of Jesus--all markers of Pinoy identity, they are umbilical cords to the familiar. The color photographs present cultural identity through markers that belong to one extended family, but stand in for any Filipino family anywhere in the world.

Stella Kalaw (b. 1969 in Manila) graduated with a degree in Professional Photography from the Brooks Institute of Photography in California and worked as an intern at Irving Penn Studio in New York City shortly after. Kalaw has been part of group shows in Washington, New York, California and at the Ayala Museum in Manila. Her works have garnered awards such as a Honorable Mention in the Polaroid International Awards and the Gold Prize in American Photo Magazine's New Views Awards.

Family Spaces by Stella Kalaw opens at 6pm on January 8, Thursday and runs until February 7, 2009. There will be an Artist Talk by Stella Kalaw on January 10, Saturday, from 3-5pm. Family Spaces will be shown along with Library Bookworks by Renato Orara at SLab (Silverlens Lab).

Silverlens Gallery is at 2/F YMC Bldg. II, 2320 Pasong Tamo Ext., Makati, 816-0044, 0905-2650873, manage@silverlensphoto.com. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday 10am–7pm and Saturdays 1–6pm. www.silverlensphoto.com.

Rodney Smith: The End

The newsletter came this morning announcing Rodney Smith's new book entitled, The End. It features 100 beautifully printed images with a book dimension of 16x20 inches. The edition size is 1000 copies. It will be available on May 15, 2009. Pre-orders will be shipped on April 15. More details here.

17 Random Things

Marianne has tagged T and I to share 17 random things about ourselves.

Here's the list:

S

1. is an Obamaholic
2. is a hypochondriac
3. misses drinking coffee but loves hot chocolate
4. still shoots film
5. sends T RSS feeds of Suri Cruise and Violet Affleck
6. played a bit part as a nurse in a Regal Films movie
7. dreams of traveling around the world for 6 months
8. was once stuck in a sand storm in the middle of the desert in West Africa
9. hates to shovel snow and that is why she lives in California
10. loves Santa Barbara
11. finds it difficult to carry on a conversation and drive at the same time
12. can hold my own in DDR (standard level only).
13. can only be motivated to exercise through swimming
14. dreams of a trust fund so she can work on personal projects the rest of her life
15. found out she can write after starting a blog
16. hated math word problems in 6th grade
17. needs a new computer

T

1. is a gadget freak
2. believes life is a database
3. is trying to learn Flash and After Effects but falls asleep every time she starts
4. is incapable of sitting through a scary movie
5. turned anti-social after high school
6. is debating about what to do with Facebook invitations from her friends
7. hates Boston
8. loves London
9. cannot live without the Google apps
10. Motto: It's all in the editing.
11. Favorite Food: Basta handa na. (Whatever's ready-to-eat.)
12. is amazed at how she once convinced S to take hiphop classes with her
13. has bought things from infomercials more frequently than she cares to admit
14. is always on the lookout for the perfect wall clock or flat screen TV
15. follows John Maeda's tweets
16. is a big believer in inbox-zero, but has thousands of unread items in her rss reader
17. subscribes to baby blog feeds

Opening Reception: Fresh Work/Kala Artists' Annual Exhibition

Last summer, I was an Artist in Resident at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA. My work will be included in this year's group show.

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More than seventy artists affiliated with the Kala Art Institute of Berkeley will be exhibiting their work at the Kala Gallery from December 11, 2008 through March 29, 2009. The exhibition will present a diverse array of prints, photography, video, digital media works and mixed media combinations. A reception will be held on Thursday, December 11 from 6:00-8:00 pm. The public is cordially invited to join us for our holiday-style gala reception. The Kala Artists’ Annual exhibition is generously supported with a grant from the Zellerbach Family Foundation.

On Saturday, January 31st we will be hosting an afternoon Open House in the Kala studios. The Open House is a great opportunity for the public to learn more about print media and meet artists from our community. Nearly thirty artists associated with Kala will be presenting a wide variety of works for sale.

Exhibition Reception: Thursday, December 11, 6-8pm
Open House: Saturday, January 31, 11-5pm

Kala Art Gallery
1060 Heinz Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94710

Gallery Hours: Tues-Fri 12:00-5:00pm, Sat 12:00-4:30pm

Dreams for a parcel of land

Batangas, 2008

The only way to get here was to take a 20 minute bangka (a small motorized boat) ride across the lake. Dad pointed at the top of the mountain. He tried to speak to me but his voice drowned against the whirling sound of the motor. I cupped my hand and touched the back of my ear with my fingers straining to hear what he was saying. He leaned over to Mom and she in turn passed on his message to me. He said there were plans to build a main road along the ridge which will eventually give us access to the property by car. He heard that construction would start by the middle of this year. However, he doubted it would actually happen given how projects often times got delayed or even postponed due to a lot of politics in the local government.

Once we got close to the property, Jun cut the motor off and slowly maneuvered the bangka to shore using a long bamboo stick. He got out and pulled the bangka by the bow, guiding it gently until the bottom slid to ground. We jumped out and took a short hike up the property. We stopped at a spot where we could get a good view of the volcano. I looked around. There was so much potential for this land. I thought to myself how wonderful it would be to have a home with large windows that overlooked the lake. I also imagined a work space where I would feel inspired to create. Wouldn't it be great to grow a variety of fruits and vegetables on the land and to be able to have a self-sustaining existence? Ahh, the simple, ideal life. I don't even have the means to make any of this a reality but at that moment, it felt good to dream of its possibilities.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Robert and Shana Parke-Harrison
Twin Palms Publishers

I just finished buying my last book for the year when I saw this from Photoeye's e-newsletter this evening. This will surely be at the top of my list for 2009.

Publisher's Description

Nearly a decade after the publication of The Architect’s Brother, Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison will be releasing their second title which revisits themes explored in the first book including man’s destruction and healing of the planet. Shot in color, the photographs also utilize the ParkeHarrisons’ early technique of applying pigment by hand, directly to their large-scale prints. Robert ParkeHarrison once again appears as the Everyman of the book’s visual narrative-one who despite the will to effect change, is all too often rendered impotent and ineffectual. The ParkeHarrisons also explore the epic landscape as a metaphor for the state of mankind, particularly alluding to recent natural disasters and their aftermath.

Seeing it all come together

For a year and half, I've seen graphics like these on T's computer screen. She would come home with preliminary designs and I would see their progression over several months. Sometimes, she would email me a couple of design directions at work with the heading "what do you think?" Then I would call her and we would briefly discuss the options and sometimes she would ask me for some suggestions. At night or during the weekends, we continue our conversation. I always enjoy going through this creative process with her.

The museum opens to the public this Friday. The press has been invited to preview the space and we've seen several photographs online. Tonight, we are both watching the award nominations concert and I can't help but feel very proud of the work she has done for this project. She definitely has a smile on her face.

The ax just started to fall

The mood was tense and serious. A meeting was called at 10:00 this morning. Two of the directors entered the room. J particularly didn't begin with his usual jovial greeting whenever he was down there to meet with one of the supervisors. He didn't even crack a smile. He quickly got to the point. He laid out the gloomy economic picture of the company. Then the announcement came-- all the departments needed to make cuts. And so it was my colleague VR that was let go. Her last day will be Friday next week. A long silence followed. Everyone was looking down at their desks. There were no reassurances and all of us knew this was just the beginning.

Before leaving the building after my shift, I stopped by and handed some paperwork to someone at another department. As I was heading out, I bumped into Tim. He was back in school this semester studying illustration. I asked how his department was doing and he said they were lucky that a manager moved to a different job and that the position will not be filled. No cuts were made.

As we said goodbye, he said, "Hey-- I'll continue to draw while you continue to take pictures." He grinned and then walked away. Needless to say, he made my day.

Getting out of a creative rut: Follow a whim

A quote from John Cleese, English Actor/Comedian:

I knew a wonderful teacher once—a tutor. He tutored my stepsons and my elder daughter. He said to me, "Always start where the energy is."

People make an awful mistake by starting where the energy isn't. If you're feeling very world-weary—and sometimes we're all in that boat—you have to sit down with something that's going to engage you. That doesn't mean you just switch on the TV and watch a cartoon, but it does mean asking, What would be fun? Maybe take a piece of paper and a pencil and start drawing silly things. Go for a walk. Just sit very quietly watching your breathing. Anything. Just allow the whim to get you going.

Now, you can't do this all of the time; it's too disconnected. But I think in that particular frame of mind, when you run out of energy and motivation, I think you have to go right down to the instinct, right down to a whim.

I'm coming up on 60, and I'm wondering where my life will begin to go. I need to take a slightly different direction. I talked to a very wise man, and he said, "If you're trying to find a new direction, don't plan it, because this [pointing to his head] has been planning your life up to now. You can't plan something new with the same old apparatus." He said, "Leave a gap. Leave a space, and just do things on auto for a while. Just see where these whims take you."

It's like creativity. You have to follow it without knowing where you're going. If you try to control where you're going, you're back in the same process. It's like asking a piece of machinery that's broken to mend itself.

source: Bad Banana Blog