http://jackwhitsitt.com/installation-and-concept-art/#num1

Repost from artdc.org:

I finished yesterday. For once – despite last minute technicaal glitches – I wasn’t there until the last minute of the last day. Just the last day.

The space is clean, cables hung (although, its still pretty ugly…maybe ill cover it with a box friday at noon), the laptop is DUCT TAPED to the projector for lack of a better solution (it is in the cage bag, so if it comes undone, it wont break), and the projection is mostly in-line with the drawings and frames.

I’m still not sure if it will (and this is important) a) turn on when the show starts or (less important) b) play music. I made a last minute decision to use internet radio instead of mp3′s to avoid broadcast rights issues, but there are some technical hangups with that that I wont get into.

This also means I’m typing this from a $300  tiny Eee PC laptop which will be my only personal home computer until AOM is done.

I do count myself lucky, though. Poor idiolect (rebound design’s bf) lost his HD -the last day of install-. It crashed. He weathered through it gracefully and put an “out of order” sign up. Hopefully the AOM gods will let him come in to fix it off-hours – he did everything right and it’s just pure bad luck that the drive crashed.

It’s been lovely getting to know my fellow AOM-ers (mostly, heh) and I regret being so focused on getting my own shit working that I havent been as chatty or social as Id have liked. Trust me, it’s me not you. I think many people have stepped up this year and I really enjoyed walking around and looking at the art yesterday.

I can’t wait for opening night, meet the artists night, and zombie prom and being more focused on having fun and lss narrow mindedly self-centered about gottagetthisdonegottasgetthisdonegottagetthisdone.

I also adore how my wife’s wall came out. I know Im her husband and all, but Im truly a fan of the pictures  she put up from Vietnam and Cambodia. She is two core walls over from my space, so please check her stuff out.
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Finally, this year I’ve felt like Ive really been able to come into this and use past artomatic and art outlet experience, take a broad vision, execute it, deal with and change my plan as it starts to flesh out into reality, and still come out of it with a piece that im happy with, still has roots in the original vision, and remains a satisfactory  progression of the rest of my art this past year.

I want to make special thanks to: Lexi, Sherill, Sean, Stephanie, Paivi, Barry, Caitlin, Justin, and Tom – all of whom made specific, repeated, concrete contributions to my art, my sanity, and my ability to get it done this year.

(edit: added lexi…she’s been super helpful. i knew i forgot someone important.)

Pics:

Artomatic Piece

Originally uploaded by sintixerr

So -

As mentioned earlier, when I first really started thinking about AOM this year, I thought I was going to be in Arkansas for the majority of the show and wanted to put together something “simple” (yeah, right, me? simple?). I was so strapped for time, in fact, that Angela and Paivi had to grab me some space for the second year in a row while I was out of town. ( My space is on the 8th floor at SE D6 btw.)

Ok. Great. Have space. Project? Art? No so much.  Ultimately I decided to do a huge (6′x6′) self portrait installation (covered in earlier blog posts – http://sintixerr.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/python-photography-digital-art-artomatic/ )

So, uhm, how do you print a photo that’s 6′x6′??? I ended up deciding to print the picture in 9 sections, 24″x24″ each. I originally wanted to do an 8′x8′ image, but at 24×24″ sections I could go one price category lower at Chrome than 32″x32″. Still, lots of cash. Hrm. Where else will print this? For a much more reasonable sum?

It turns out that -Ritz Camera- of all places will print really large images for less than half the price of Chrome. Supposedly archival. I test printed one 24×24″ section and it came out perfect. Sweet. I had a printing solution.

For framing I went with Angela’s suggestion of American Framing and picked the smallest frame borders I could – with no matting. The ultimate effect would hopefully look like the face was peering in through…something (window-esque?). That was an easy process and everything showed up toot-sweet.

I went with overnightprints.com for the business cards. They did a good job but, in hindsight, I didnt. I think my cards are a little bit juvenile and cheesy, but, we all make mistakes sometimes I mean, who puts “Artist” on their cards? I guess I do. Meh.

While I was still playing with my final image, I met Angela and Paivi at our spaces last Sunday to help them paint, do lights, and take a look at my space.

I got there first and spent an hour or so mocking up what I wanted things to look like with rope and gorilla tape (it made sense then). The final result was looking pretty good and I was feeling very satisfied. Until Ang and Paivi showed up.

“Thats not your space, Jack”

“Whu?”

“Thats. Not. Your. Space. Its the one next to it.”

–Insert vulgar words here–

Luckily I hadn’t done anything permanent and I sheepishly took down all my stuff. At any rate, I knew what it was going to look like and everything was good.

Angela and Paivi that day managed to paint their space, buy lights, put up lights. I managed to…put down duct tape and put up one wall of the shadowbox (seen in pics later). Really, I hate this part. Im slow as HELL at painting walls and usually a mess. People always regret asking me to help them paint their house/interior. I suck at it.

I came in the next Thursday after work by myself to try my luck alone and got a lot further. I managed to put up the second shadowbox wall, put down a layer of paint, and not end up with blood or paint all over my clothes. It was a good day in that regard. Still, I had forgotten paint rollers and had to use a brush. Those partitions, even with primer, suck. up. the paint. I was despairing a little bit about how things were looking, but put that aside knowing how much was left to do.

So far, I’d run into a couple of people here and there that I knew, but the AOM space is -so- large this year that unless youre actively wandering around looking for people or just outright lucky, it’s entirely possible to work with a dozen people you know there at the same time and miss them completely. (Except for Melissa, whom I run into every single time Im in the elevator.)

This past Saturday night I had my first volunteer shift with Angela and Paivi, so I came in ahead of time to get some work done. I met my “partition-mate”, who’s name I can’t recall at the moment, but who’s work I had been familiar with and am really psyched to be next to. If I had space in my apartment, Id buy some of it honestly. More painting ensued and things were good.

Queue the volunteer shift.

I have a gripe here. We were given a 3 minute introduction to our responsibilities by the GM on duty. The instructions did not mention two big things that we were asked about -all- night:

1. Lights. Anything about them. Where to get them? What to do if any were broken? Etc. I know this was a GM responsibility, but by Saturday you’d have figured that there were enough questions being asked that the volunteers should be given some sort of heads-up.

2. Brightest Young Things:

Anyone who was at AOM that night figured out very quickly that there was some shindig on the first floor. The only instructions of info we were given by anyone about the first floor party was “oh yeah, tell people bathrooms are on the 10th and 12th floors if they start bitching about the first floor bathrooms”.

What about the first floor bathrooms? Huh? And who’s making all that racket next door? Apparently Philipa Hughs’ Pinkline and Artomatic collaborated to help throw a relaunch party for a website called BrightestYoungThings.com ( http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/events/byt-relaunch-party-1200-1st-street-ne/ )

So, in addition to AOM people, there were tons of the trendiest, coolest, hippest, artsiest, brightest young things wandering in and out of the front door. Nothing against them (and it was cool something else was going on there), but it was really a pain in the ass to do “lobby” duty while there were bands playing, a plastic fence between us and them, etc.

I was asked to “keep people from there going up to AOM”…but really…how was anyone supposed to tell the difference? There were also a lot of people bringing in artist materials through the lobby that I didnt catch because I couldn’t always pick them out from the crowd milling about in the lobby.

This all would’ve been cool if we had been given heads-up….but we weren’t. We were left to piece it together ourselves…

I also wish I’d NOT worn the -skankiest- shirt I own to paint in. Felt like I was bringin the place down just sitting next to the party Wink

The monotony was broken up a bit by a trip to Sketchies (aka Wendy’s) to bring us back some much-needed diet cokes (Angela and Paivi were covering Loading Dock duty that night) and also by Jim, who gestured for another volunteer and myself (I think he meant me too) to come out front where he proudly showed us the new lighting for the Artomatic signage in the windows. The “ART” in “ARTOMATIC” was glowing red! Cool!

By the end of the shift, we were all -done-. Id gone running that morning for the first time since the Cherry Blossom 10 miler and between that, working on the space, and the volunteer shift, I was no longer human. Paivi wanted to take some pics of the graffiti kids up on our floor (Cool doing their thing (didnt work out), but we did run into Halo and Arty4ever putting down some finishing touches on Michael’s space (which looks great!).

I also met a couple of cool volunteers, but unfortunately was too brain-fried to ask for the business card of one of them and now forget her name. Ill need to check the volunteer list later if I can…

That brings me to today. Lights are up, painting is finished, etc. I just need to get some fabric to frame the shadowbox, hang the piece, and add some other artistic touches to the installation (and it will be an installation) that I dont want to describe here. I managed to frame all 9 sections (woohoo – Im really slow at that, so Im proud of myself here) today as well!

Ok, whew. Finally, this behemoth of a post is at it’s end.

(As a side note, the lighting in the first pic is provided by a couple of White Lighting 10,000 strobe, which we’ve now started using as generic apartment lamps lately. Heh.)

—

Second, Paivi and I, with Angela’s help and company, got our submissions framed today for the Photo 08 competition in Arlington. It’s one of the few juried events I’ve submitted to, one of the fewer photo events Ive submitted to, and the only one so far that has required pre-framed submissions. But this meant that the process ended up being kind of cool for me (if more expensive than I would have liked) since it involved creating something of tangible value from my photography (and from Paivi’s) by actually getting images printed and framed.

I was also particularly interested in submitting for this show, in part, because of the juror: David Griffin, Director of Photography & Senior Editor for National Geographic. For whatever reason, it seemed like the kind of photos I take would be more appropriate than – for example – The Fraser gallery competition. The same goes for Paivi’s photos.
I had considered having Chrome do the work but, honstly, I can’t tell the difference between Chrome images and the printer we have at some (and certainly not when you account for expense). So, after spending a few hours (don’t ask) getting the HP Photosmart to print the right sized, we were ready to go.

Here are the three I chose (click for larger):

What do you think? I know I completely regretted what I sent to the Fraser thing. What was I thinking? I also didn’t send the “Waiting for Love” pic (the dress outside of a building in Adams Morgan). I love the pic, but others needed their chance!

We ended up doing the framing work, as usual, at the Framer’s Workroom (DIY). I hope we didn’t cause too much of back-up by bringing six pieces at once for framing! Also hope I didnt look to grungy. Angela and I came straight there from running 6 miles on the mall!

It’s been a fun, cool day overall and I’m looking forward to DC9 tonight!

Edit: I just found out one of my oldest friends (knew in FL, lives in DC, small world) who is a tech writer by day…has taken up sword swallowing and other sideshow things! How cool is that?

Ofrenda Installation First Glance

Originally uploaded by sintixerr

This image is a shot I took of Angela standing next to our Ofrenda installation project for the Day of the Dead / Dia De Los Muertos show in Clarendon / Arlington this Saturday (10/13) at Mexicali Blues. Tonight was the first night people had to install their art and it almost turned into a mini show opening! So many people walking by on the street stopped to look, come in, talk, and take postcards out with them. If this traffic is any indication, the show is going to be a wild success.

There is some other outstanding art already there – stuff that moves, stuff that glows, wood cuts, altars, stuff that lights up. There will be music, workshops, and fun. Everyone should stop by – even if you plan on hitting the artdc.org show as well, there’s time to do both!

Wake Not Wake 2Originally uploaded by sintixerr

Art Outlet will be putting on a show Saturday, October 13 in Arlington, VA celebrating Day of the Dead (Dia De Los Muertos) through art, music, and other events. I wasn’t sure if I was going to enter, but since Angela Kleis, my wife Paivi, and myself have been spending so much time together talking about and engaging in photography (and since Im on Art Outlet’s board of directors), we decided to do a collaborative piece together.How to do that, though? We didnt really have enough space to show related pieces from each of us – and that really wouldn’t be interesting as a collaboration.

Luckily, a lightbulb went off as I was looking through an unrelated series of photos I had taken of the Washington Monument in DC. The three of us has been sitting in relatively the same place for a couple of hours and I had at least 30 shots of the monument taken from the same perspective – only the people and lighting really changed. I threw them together into the Pinnacle video editing suite and ended up with a pretty neat looking movie/animation of those 30 pictures. There wasn’t a plot or time progression involved, but rather a jumpy twitchy averaged version of a place. Neat. What if the three of us take pictures of the same themed scene and weave them together in a video later to similar effect?

All we needed was a subject and theme. For this, I pulled from 2 80′s songs (Concrete Blonde’s Mexican Moon and Sisters of Mercy’s Nine While Nine) and a scene I’d shot for an english project illustrating Camus’ The Stranger” in High School. We basically gathered a bunch of friends together to create a “Wake” scene in black and white. A body (Jelena, a friend of mine from Journalism class) was laid out on a table in Rock Creek Park. and covered with fabric. Under the table, we put lights to give the table more of a floating-altar feel. Around the table we sat 4 friends (although we’d hoped for more) in identical white seats in a semi-circle. We left 1 darker sear empty to highlight the missing individual. Just before dusk, the three of us went to town shooting as many interesting shots as we could in the course of an hour. I used a Digital Rebel XT with a 50mm lens and another Wide Angle. Paivi used her Cannon 40D with a 28-70 L series sense. Angela used a Minolta and a Cannon with various filters – including a silky filter and a lens baby.

We ended up with a ton of shots and Sunday we’ll be sequencing these together into an animation.

At Ofrenda, we’ll be projecting this animation onto a custom frame Im having built. Basically, there will be framed glass with a layer of white tissue paper behind it. The tissue paper will be mounted on spacers to keep it against the glass while leaving about 1/4″ of space between it and the backing.

By projecting the animation into this frame, any excess light from the projector will pass through the tissue paper, hit the backing, and radiate back outward into the room. This will give the imagery an actual diffuse “glow” that will add to the surreal, dreamy feeling of the piece.

We will be hiding the projector in a sculpture of box and will be adding actual ofrendas in, on, and around the piece. We want the photo animation to be the centerpiece, but the ofrenda’s should provide some place, context, and grounding that the images might lack by themselves.

More information about the show can be found about the show HERE. Hope everyone can make it!

More sample images that we took can be found in THIS thread on ArtDC

SPWF, in particular, benefitted from the surrounding color. His green eyes really pop out more than they did before. There are so many other colors all over that piece that they apparently really needed a firm, bright anchor around the piece to enhance the contrast. I can see his eye color from here, ten feet away. I’m not sure if I would’ve been able to otherwise. It’s a great example of what to look for in a matte…not just a color that looks good, but one that brings out the features you want to highlight in particular.

ALS, on the other hand, already has a lot of contrasting solid sections of color. Those didn’t need enhancement. What I was looking for, instead, was a softer color to help group in the contrasts and tie them together. The beige is almost (to my eye) an average of the rest of the colors in the picture. I was originally thinking of just using a neutral white, but one of my favorite features of the piece is the unfinished white area in the bottom right section of the drawing. It’s part of the whole experience and a white matte just wouldn’t have accented that at all. Going with something darker helps to reign in that big expanse of nothing and keep it part of the whole picture.

I had forgotten how big Almost Like Stars (left) is (30″ high with frame) and Smear Painted Wax Faced (right) ended up being smalled than expected (21″ high with frame).