Week 4 Justine Kurland

I had never been able to attend an Artist Critique before and I was very excited to be able to participate in Justine's.  Although, it would have been really wonderful if my own work was on the wall.

I thought for most of what she had to say were spot on comments.  Particularly when she was talking about the images from a male student in the corner, and how his stuff was focused on design.  It was nice to see her essentially showing the student his strong skills and encouraging him to develop them further.  I appreciated that she talked about the one set of photographs with color lights.  She pointed out that it looked more like a low-hollywood set, rather than "photography".  It disappoints me when photo majors use the camera to display something about another medium, rather than focusing on photography.

It was nice to see her pick apart students image sets and, in an upfront manner, select the photographs that fit together perfectly, while pushing aside the rest.  I feel that most students don't put enough thought into the images they want to display for a show, so I loved that she wanted to help with the organization.  Choosing your images correctly can really make or break a show.

I did not like a portion of her comments on Melissa's pictures.  I felt that most of what was addressed and talked about was very helpful and insightful, but not in this case.  She immediately spoke about how it's hard to do a self portrait if you are a "non-conventional female by society's standards".  While this is true, and I assume the work is in fact discussing the that, I felt it was really unnecessary to mention the topic.  Once she began talking about the lines and shapes and the specific use of the body, I believe in the third and fourth images, I forgave it.  However, the topic of "being overweight is difficult" is way too obvious of an idea to discuss, at least when I'm listening to a guest speaker who is supposed to be much more knowledgable in a field and can offer real insights into student work.

I found it interesting at the beginning when discussing one of the first two students pieces how opposed I was to Justine's preferences in images.  We started with a female student who had a self portrait that depicted her chest with puzzle pieces over it.  I thought that picture was very interesting, aside from the visible tape, but Justine did not like it and instead voted for the one below, which showed the backside of a girl in pantyhose.  For me, I felt I had seen the pantyhose one countless times before.  So, I thought it was intriguing that she approved of that one so much more, causing me to investigate the image further a day later.  I still stand by my original preference though.

Hopefully, I'll be able to attend more of these Artist Critiques in the future.

(I wasn't sure if the associated students would appreciate me posting iPhone pictures of their work, so I've omitted them for now.)