I have been invited to exhibit a piece in an upcoming show at the Loveland Museum of Art. The show is titled Twirling Dali's Moustache and the opening is Friday, December 11th from 6-8pm.
I don't consider myself to be a surrealist photographer, but I have created works that have a surreal quality. This is the image I've submitted for the show. It is titled Moon Falling and is from my Nocturnal Suburbia series.
On the part of the horse.
I will be in a small group show of Plus Gallery Artists at Ironton Studios. Each of the artists will be creating one large piece for the show and it is a great opportunity for all of us to push our work into a new realm. For me it means producing one photograph at a scale I've never tried before. My single photograph will be 7.5 feet tall by 9.75 feet wide. It's been very exciting to work at this size.
The opening is Friday, September 11th from 7-10pm. I hope you can come by to see the work!
Here is the work in progress...
Simply Awesome:
Death and the Maiden (Musical Interlude), 2007
charcoal on paper
Goff+Rosenthal
I have been selected for a group show titled Works of Man at the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, CO. The juror for the exhibition was one of my favorite contemporary photographers, Chris Jordan. The artist reception takes place during the Fort Collins Gallery walk on July 3rd from 6-9pm. I hope you can check out the show!
I donated a piece to the silent auction for the DAM Contemporaries and I will also be attending the event and photographing the celebration along with my friend and fellow artist, Rachel Hawthorn. Come join us!
I put some new pictures up on my website from my trip, and decided to use these images for my first experimentation with pairings. I have never tried this with my own images, although I have great respect for artists who do this with their work regularly. It's not an easy task, and fighting with the pairings that make sense logically vs. aesthetically is sometimes hard to sort out. It's easy to just want to know "why" images go together, but sometimes they just feel like they do. Is that a good enough explanation? I'm curious what you think about pairings for your own work and when you think it makes sense and when it is just fluff.
While on our Lewis and Clark trail ride today, we came across live elk, deer, rattlesnakes, eagles as well as some pretty well preserved skeletons of the same. We also happened across a freshly killed elk. As we approached a large flock of black crows were circling around. The Labrador retriever (Duke) that was with us ran them off and I took a photo.
Today we took a 10 mile horseback ride through Lewis and Clark country--North Fork, Idaho, near the Salmon River. It was the most beautiful country I have seen in a long time. It's hard to believe such untouched beauty still exists in the US while in the confines of the city. Thanks to our guide, Justin, we had a taste of the history and the difficulty of the journey they took so long ago.
In case you didn't know, my husband and I are on a road trip. Well, we were. Now we have reached our destination in the remote mountains of Montana and we are having a wonderful and relaxing time among the pine and aspen trees.
A few pictures from our trip through Wyoming, through Yellowstone and into Montana.
Scott contemplating the World's Largest Mineral Hotsprings in Thermopolis, WY
Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park
It's Springtime--Buffalo mom and baby!
Scott eating buffalo. No baby buffalo were harmed in the making of this photo. Buffalo poop was stepped in.
1. This drawing is the bees knees
2. This story makes me angry. It represents the worst facets of the business of art.
I saw the work of Pablo Soria while I was in Dallas during the national conference of SPE (Society of Photographic Education). They are beautiful online, but they don't come close to touching the beauty of these pieces in person.
Litex camera film print over linen and acrylic painting on paper
48 x 48 in. Year 2006 Pablo Soria
Litex camera film print over linen and acrylic painting on paper
20 x 20 in. Year 2006 Pablo Soria
I went on a long overdue day-long road trip on Tuesday. It was one of those "unseasonably warm" Colorado days, and I knew that I wouldn't see 65 degrees again for a while. In fact, I woke up to several inches of snow today.
I drove out to Yuma, Colorado which is almost to the Kansas state line. At the end of the day after loading all my images into Lightroom, I noticed a strange theme to my shooting throughout the day. I photographed hills. All kinds of hills. Anthills, bushes in the shape of hills, natural terrain and at one point a 15 foot pile of corn. In the shape of a hill, of course. What is the deal??
All images copyright © Patti Hallock 2008
In thinking about those anthills I was photographing, I remembered a story I saw about a teacher that makes molds of the complex tunnels that ants create to help us visualize the underground world they live in. Nature as art:
My heart has taken another blow with the loss of my sweet puppy, CJ. Even though he was almost 12 years old and gray like an old man, he was always still a puppy in his heart and in mine. When I was thinking of words to describe him I came up with sweet, handsome, happy, loyal, loving and most of all, CONSTANT. CJ was always CJ. Always dependable in his sweet disposition and happy attitude. From the time he was a puppy until his last day with us, he always carried his leash in his mouth as if he was the one taking us for a walk. He went to doggie daycare from the time he was three months old, and he never retired from it. Everywhere he went, people loved CJ and were always happy to see him and CJ was ALWAYS happy to see other people. CJ assumed everyone wanted to say hello, dogs, people, cats, squirrels. He was confused by the mixed reception he would get from cats. He loved them, why didn't they love him?
CJ loved ice cubes, hiking, scratching, and food, food, food. Oh, and chewing. He was a lab, after all and I believe he had an engineer's mind about chewing. You could watch him with a new bone, working on it, turning it around until he found the weak spot. He was happiest when he was with us, close by and part of the pack. In the end, we discovered he had bone cancer and the tremendous pain that it caused was something we would not let him suffer. As painful as it is for us to let him go, I'm consoled knowing he is happy in doggie heaven running around sniffing doggie butts and no longer suffering from his aging legs.
My heart is broken. We miss you so much CJ.
When he was a younger man:
Right now I'm in my basement hiding from the sirens going off in my neighborhood warning us about a possible tornado. While I wait down here for the storm to pass, I thought I'd make a posting.
I have had lots of thoughts to put down here but I never seem to get around to posting those ideas. It took an email that I was writing to Tema Stauffer about my project to spur me to finally put these images up on my blog.
Last month I took a trip to Kansas to spend the weekend on the Moore Family Ranch. The Joe and Nancy Moore raise Texas Longhorn cattle on natural grass prairies over many, many acres of land. It was a tremendously eye-opening experience for me. Their way of life differs from mine in just about every way. They have a nice home with running water, a dishwasher and all those kinds of amenities. What I mean is that the concerns of their day-to-day life differ from mine. The easiest way to state it would be that the primary concern when they wake up in the morning is THE RANCH, not ME, ME, ME. I could go on and on but I'll save that for another posting.
In the meantime, here are two different images from the weekend. The Moore family has free roaming cattle that eat grass on the prairie. The cattle that goes to slaughter is sold locally and on a subscription basis to a few customers. This cow died of natural causes on the prairie about a 18 months ago. The carcass is still left behind but the rest of her body went back to the land.
While driving home to Colorado I drove past about 30 of these large operations called feedlots. This is primarily where the meat comes from that you see in the supermarket.
In case you were wondering, the tornado warning expired and my house is still intact.
Sometimes the weather cooperates when I'm photographing. In one sense this was a difficult place to shoot because the wind was really blowing hard and it was cold. I took this last week -- it was about 50 degrees. At the same time, the dark threatening clouds in the sky mimicked my mood perfectly.
I had the amazing experience of loving and being loved by my cat Monster for almost 17 years. She has been my friend and companion for half of my life, traveling with me across country multiple times and living in almost as many different places with me as she has had years. She lost her battle with cancer yesterday and has left me with a huge gaping hole where my heart used to be.
Monster managed to communicate very effectively with humans by talking. I don't mean talking like a person, but she had a different meow for every different kind of idea she wanted to communicate. Often these ideas were commands to the surrounding humans to serve her in some way. "Fill this water bowl. Now this one. Now feed me. Scratch my back. Get out of bed and feed me. Now." Wherever we went, Monster managed to recruit all of my closest friends over the years to care for her. She had a big personality. She was warm and loving, independent and strong, and she had the loudest and most soothing purr I've ever encountered.
Monster's many nicknames: Monster-face, Mons, Brat, Moo-moo, Sweetpea, Water-Monster, Brat-face, Monsterositor, (forgive my spelling, I've never written these down before)
I did all that I could to care for her in every way possible and she returned the favor all these years. She came into my life shortly after I lost my mother to cancer. I found her when she was just four weeks old, abandoned by her mother who was a stray. Monster was a beautiful cat full of love and character. I will miss her terribly. Here are some of my favorite pictures:
A really moving story--check it out:
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/15131
Who can afford these homes? Who are these people?
