Artist Post-Chris Saah

One of the artists that I decided to review on was Chris Saah. This former St. Mary’s College alumnus is a digital photographer who graduated with a philosophy major. Luckily I was able to have him as a professor this semester and therefore got a chance to really engage myself within his comments and work. Chris actually lives in Washington, D.C. but he traveled down here frequently to teach classes. After he graduated from the college he actually got an internship at the National Museum of American Art and then started working as a designer for different organizations and groups. His work actually involves the layering of several images together and then going through a process of mounting lights to create a deep space that seems almost unreal. By using tinted light Chris is able to create the perfect tone and hue for areas that he’s interested in exploring further through the photograph. In Photoshop he takes several images and starts to morph them together, washing out the color in certain areas and increasing it in others. This effect allows for his final prints to look surreal and as if they were set up. In a sense though, they were set up, which is one of the main things that I’m not too interested in. Although his final prints turned out beautiful, most of them seem to resemble a toy or put together stage for dolls. For example, in his print Displacement 12v, there is a lot of blurring of the foreground and background, and a meshing of yellow and brown hues that create an unreal depth to the photograph. It amazes me how just in Photoshop he can create a new landscape out of several, I just wish a lot of them didn’t look so staged.


Some inspiration that Chris left us with is to simply just shoot photographs and then make work out of your outcomes. I think that by this he wants his students to just have fun with the medium and to simply go and explore different methods and areas before even realizing what you truly want to work with. Overall I think that Chris’ method of working is quite different from me and my film photography, but I think it’s an interesting dive into the digital realm of photography. Even though I’m not a fan of digital work persay, I found his work to be a bit inspirational. The new worlds that he creates are evident of his philosophical background and the meshing of two or more spaces shows his exploration.

Artist Post-David Ellsworth

For my artist lecture, I wanted to do my post on David Ellsworth and his video work that was displayed to us in class. I wanted to go outside of the traditional artist lectures that are given on campus and focus on a more prominent artist that we are surrounded by each day. A little bit of background information, Dave Ellsworth lived in New York for some time before moving down here to Maryland. He worked as a film and TV editor at Broadway Video, Inc., which he says wasn’t the best job but it helped him learn the business. Working primarily with super 8 films, Dave says that Susan Sontag and her writings heavily influenced him. Although I’ve read many Sontag writings before, specifically On Photography, I always found it hard to understand and connect to, so it was interesting to hear that such a philosophical and theoretical writer influenced him.
One of the first videos that Dave showed us was a music video he had done for a band called tortoise. The video shot in 1998 incorporated a lot of repetition of images and it was all set to the rhythm of the music. One specific thing that I remember about this video is the humanoid feel that was presented to such manmade objects. I think a lot of this had to do with the pace of the video and how it seemed choppy and stop animation like. The second film that we were able to watch was a sort of documentary of a junkyard with moving machines and its general daily life occurring. Being about 20 minutes long really allowed me to see how much footage has to be edited down to create such a long movie. It makes me wonder about longer films and how people create 3 plus hours of footage. Being in the junkyard felt really machine like, not only because of the giant machines moving around but because of the sound. There was no real dialogue in the entire film except for when a worker starts to give a quick, short demand to another co-worker. All of the other sounds are the grinding and scraping of machines against metal, which can be a bit disjointing. I had never seen a short film like this before and I thought that it worked really well with the subject matter that was being recorded. Something like this isn’t too interesting to normally view, but in this context it seemed to become a way of life for everyone and everything around there. Later in the discussion David explained to us that this area is heavily involved with steel and other metal and the steel mill life in general. It really makes you see the area for what it is and how rarely we see areas like this.
One interesting fact about his work is that for the second movie we watched, he only used one mic and one camera. He had to move the shotgun mic around the area to capture the sounds from each direction, which allows for some footage to be pretty muted and other footage to be really loud. Also, he told us that to get into this area, he simply emailed the company and asked it he could do some footage. Surprisingly the company said yes as long as he wore the protective gear (hardhat.) This is a reminder of how if you simply ask someone if you can produce artwork from or out of his or her place, how easy that can actually happen. Overall, I think that Dave’s work is extremely interesting. I’ve never experienced film like this before and it really gave me inspiration to finally start experimenting with my own film. Being a photographer, I find it really interesting to see the movement behind all of the still prints that occur within life, and it seems like video is the one medium that can help capture it.


From his film Time, and the River.

Artist Inspiration for final project-Heather Ujiie & Bonnie Lane

For this final project, I found it really hard to find any inspiration from specific artists. I was originally influenced by Sally Mann’s work on her Deep South series of photographs that she took down in Louisiana and Mississippi, but I wasn’t sure of another artist that inspired me. Mann’s photos were one of the main things that I was interested in exploring further, simply because her “deep south” is almost like the deep south here, where there’s still a lot of negative, war history. Although I found her work to be inspirational, I wanted to find another artist whose work was related to my own. I found that there wasn’t just one artist that I found interesting, but many. The first artist that I came across was Heather Ujiie and her work “Ninja Warrior Face-off.” This work was a series of large digital prints that were on hung pieces of fabric. Her imagery that is used within her piece is influenced by a source far from my own, Kung foo movies and comics. Although the subject matter isn’t the same, the process was for me. I really liked how each of her prints covered the entire piece of fabric and allowed for a full bleed of the work. Also, I was inspired by the type of fabric that she uses, which is a very see-through, flimsy type fabric. It seems to resemble a sort of linen or mesh type material, but I couldn’t find out specifically what she used. Regardless, I found it to be really unique. You could see the images that were hung behind her prints through the prints in front, making each layer or section of work connect to one another. This is something I wanted to do with my artwork, have the fabric be sheer enough so the images outside could be seen on the inside, through the fabric. With this particular work, she actually embroiders the image with thread after she digitally prints it onto the fabric. Her method of stitching is far from what inspired me, but I really enjoyed how it added a handmade quality to each of the large hangings.




Another artist that I came across was Bonnie Lane. This artist has specific works that also involve digital prints on fabric. Once again, I wasn’t so much interested in her content but more in her process. Her work entitled Every Time You Sleep You Leave Me was a large digitally printed photo on sheer cloth of a sleeping person’s face. Her work also has a sound component of a person breathing while they sleep. Although she has a blue light cast upon the print from afar, her printing technique is very interesting. Like Ujiie’s work, she has printed full-scale photos onto the fabric and hung them in a setting where light can come through the print. Even though her light is artificial the concept still remains the same. Her work Are You Awake? also has large scaled prints but this time with actual text showing through the fabric with colorful lights. One thing that I really like about her work is the artificial light. I was most interested in natural light and how that plays a part into seeing the print like you would in the outside world. Though I think that the aura that colorful artificial light casts through certain materials is beautiful. It really creates a unique glow, especially with black text in front of it. I think that for any of my future project’s I could possibly project text through pieces of fabric with colored light to create this two-toned look. One quote from her that I found particularly interesting was My work is all about showing what I have experienced or known personally but I aim for the audience to be able to relate to it on their own level and somehow put a bit of themselves into the work and create their own story.” This is really how I felt about my work this time around. I knew that a lot of people didn’t know much about Point Lookout but I wanted them to have just enough history to make their own stories up within the context of the negative history that’s occurred there. Regardless of whether or not they’ve experienced it personally themselves, I think that my audience should be able to relate to it through the experience that they have when looking at my prints.





Although I didn’t really find one specific artist whose work was similar to my idea, I found a lot of artists who were all incorporating parts of my idea. I’m really glad that I got the chance to experience other artist’s work before actually creating my own so I had a clear idea of what would look unique and what wouldn’t. I found that using embroidery isn’t always the best option, especially on digitally printed fabric. I also found that projecting certain light through certain fabrics could create effects that no natural light could ever produce. Lastly, the aesthetic of each print was something that I found interesting within both artists. Each artist also have an extensive body of work, especially on fabric printing that I found to be really unique. Although most of the work is unlike mine, the colors, shapes and designs of each print are favorably unique.