Carnegie's Community Sourced Art Portfolio

This past spring, I agreed to be one of the artists chosen for inclusion in The Carnegie's first CSA portfolio. The idea is that the selected artists make pieces that will fit into a 11x17" box and collectors from the community purchase the portfolio sight unseen for a really reasonable $350 and get (in this case) 9 pieces of art. There are 50 portfolios in the offering so it's a really great way to get collectors who have never seen or never purchased your work to begin to grow their collection. This has been done in Minneapolis, Cincinnati and other arts conscious cities. I loved the idea and agreed to put work in the portfolio. The portfolio is curated by Carnegie's Matt Distel.

An artist can do 50 distinctly original pieces or one piece 50 times. I chose to do 2 pieces 25 times each and sign them as part of this portfolio. The date for delivery is July 1st,  I believe. I was going to post my pieces here but that would be a little premature. So come back in July to see what I offered in the portfolio.

I was asked if it was a bad deal for artists and replied NO since, it's an opportunity to have my work in 50 new collections with little effort on my part and I see it as a way to have people who might not know my work to become familiar with some of it. I was happy to be a part of this first portfolio and hope at another time to be a part of other ones.

Mine are all printed and delivered. I was anxious to get it done not knowing what this summer has in store for us.

Since I cannot show what I put in, I can show work from the same series that is not in the portfolio.

Here's what I have been working on....

Which group do you like more? The singles or the doubles with the added word and drawing?

Lost & Found Ellora Caves

Metta: Meenakshi Temple, Madurai

Metta: Varanasi Ghats

Hall of a thousand columns, Meenakshi Temple, Madurai

Pilgrims, Meenaskshi Temple, Madurai

Tourists, Taj Mahal

Silk Weaver, Varanasi

Been gone so long....

Blogging is not one of the things that comes first to my mind and it seems to have fallen off the radar for me for the past two years. Once school begins, it seems there are way too many other things that perk to the top of the critical list and blogging falls away.

However, this is my last summer before my last year of teaching. I will retire at the end of the next academic year having completed 41 years of teaching full time in higher ed. My first 18 were in Denver at Metropolitan State where I was the only full time photo person but shared my darkrooms with two other schools who also had photo teachers. The last 22 have been at Northern Kentucky University where I was chair, then back up to the faculty in photography.

As each school year ends, I usually fill the first few weeks with updating my class websites, thinking up new research assignments and thinking about what needs improving while I still remember. This summer, I did it differently, I quickly began working in the studio on re-editing work I had never used from travels abroad. The intense time in the studio refreshed me to open my head again.

The big question that my pal Barry Andersen and I discussed but came to no conclusion was: Are pictures from travels that don't clearly fit into a project ever more than travel pictures? Can they have a new life, can they become a new portfolio of images that can fit into your larger body of work? Whew, that's heavy and still unclear. My hope is that they will make some sense when you look full circle at one's career of imagemaking.

So, I have been out of school for just over a month now. Not all days are productive in the studio and some days I do other things. Today, we will have lunch with Melanie Spencer Warner and her husband then I will go to school for a software meeting. Melanie graduated around 2000 and has been a very successful journalist since then using her other degree for the writing and her photo degree for the images she includes. She also continues to make her personal work which is lovely and can be seen on her blog.