Artist Lecture Response

I attended the final artist lecture of the semester in which Jennifer Lamontagne presented. Jennifer Lamontagne is an alum of the art department at UNH, graduating two years ago with a BFA focused on painting and drawing. Jennifer presented pieces spanning from her time at UNH to her present day work. Her style and approach seemed to have shifted quite a bit even in the short window between her graduation and the present day.

Jennifers talk focused mainly on her experiences post-grad, however she did touch upon her creative process during her undergrad years. As an undergrad, her work was mainly introspective, containing motifs and expressing her feelings and experiences, in particular, with living as a type I diabetic.  She received an undergraduate research grant to study religious art. Beyond that, she showcased a few very large self portraits on unstretched canvas, made with gesso and charcoal.

Her thoughts and reactions and how her work and perspective changed when one of her professors remarked that the women in her pieces appeared submissive was very interesting. Art is very introspective, and when viewed from a more subjective standpoint a lot of work can have different interpretations. Jennifer’s works evolution following this highlight how helpful critiques or commentary can be.

The primary focus of her lecture was on job hunting as a post-graduate. She strongly emphasized that at her most successful opportunities, she wasn’t doing exactly what she had envisioned herself doing, but rather adapting her skillset to the unexpected. This is a great perspective on life and the workplace.

Gum Bichromate

Final Project Proposal

For my final project I will be exploring the uncanny valley. The valley can be described as a phenomena in which human-like replicas that appear very convincing, but are not quite human, can create feelings of eeriness and revulsion among viewers. I find the valley itself as a concept to be fascinating. In terms of my own experiences as a computer science major (who likes to consider himself involved in the art world), I am looking to create a dialogue that explores and expresses the often impersonal and alienating tech world and its jarring intersection and reformation of a process as intimate as analog photography.

I will be incorporating image capturing methods from my senior thesis to create these images. 3D meshes will be rendered from a point cloud that is captured with the depth sensors on an xbox kinect. The rendered mesh is then manipulated with a 3D modeling software called blender in order to produce the desired 3D models.  Post-processing of these models is done to produce a flat image in the form of a stereoscopic anaglyph like the test image on the left. The final image will be printed in gum bichromate in order to preserve the red and blue channels so that the images may be viewable in 3D with an appropriate pair of red-blue glasses.

Cyanotype Scanner as Camera

Cyanotype

Cliche Verre

Scanner as Camera

Camera Obscura

Camera Obscura is latin for "dark room." The devices date back to the 5th century BC. At its simplest incarnation, a camera obscura consists of a dark box with a pinhole sized "lens" on one side. Light enters the lens and is refracted to produce an image on the opposite side. The cameras were often used as a drawing aid for artists. Camera obscuras can range in size from a small handheld box to room-sized. The smaller sized incarnations evolved into the film cameras we know and love today once light sensitive films were developed.

Favorite Photographer

Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, the photographers behind Toilet Paper Magazine, are among my favorite photographers. The humor and often jarring grotesqueness of their images paired with bright and glossy content and colors gives their work an unmistakeable look and feel that land them among my favorites.