We were first invited to give this presentation at FotoFusion in West Palm Beach, Florida in January.  FotoFusion is a really interesting festival with great panels, lectures and seminars.  The audience was definitely skewed toward an older crowd though, and our talk went from “what not to post on Facebook” to “Facebook is a website. . .”.  Still, the talk was well-received, and a blast to do.

Our second time was to a completely different audience – the photography students at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC.  David and I were invited to give the Social Media talk, lecture to a class, meet with the graduate students, critique several student projects, and generally hang out and talk photo.  It was amazing.  Here are a few pictures from the trip (collected from various iphones – not a representation of the photographic talent we saw there!).

Talking to students about editioning their work at the Tapp's Art Center. David appears to be tweeting. . .

"Photography in the Age of Social Media" talk

during a crit

If you have known me for more than five minutes, you probably know that I breathe ideas. Inside my head is a scary place to be, and if a big one comes, you best jump on board or jump out of the way, because it’s going to come at you like a steam engine.

Walk Away With Art (or WAWA as we’ve affectionately been calling it) was one of those big ones.  In thinking about how to encourage people who haven’t been thinking about art to engage with it and become collectors, I wanted to develop a few “branded” events at the gallery to work toward this goal.  ArtFeast was one idea, and we held the first one a few weeks ago to great fanfare.  But WAWA was the idea bomb.

Here’s how it works – I invite seven of my photographers to give seven different images (one gives eight, making 50 total unique images) to pin up around the gallery.  We sell 50 tickets, and everyone who has a ticket draws a number from 1 to 50 when they check in.  All of the photographers are at the event and each have a few minutes to introduce themselves and talk a bit about their work.  When everyone has had time to look around and decide which pieces are their favorites, we start calling numbers.  We go in order from 1 to 50, and when we call a number, the person with that number goes up to their favorite piece, takes it off the wall, and is now a collector.  Everyone walks away with art.

For me, an event like this works to build collecting on a lot of levels.  At the most basic, it is an exciting and fun party.  Great food, great cocktails, great art.  People are coming into the gallery and having a really positive experience, making them more likely to attend future events.

Next, they are engaging with art in a meaningful way.  Because everyone gets to take home a piece (original, signed), they are really looking at all of the photographs and figuring out what they are drawn to.  I purposefully chose seven photographers with very different aesthetics, to show the wide range in photographic style and subject and to make sure there would be something appealing for each guest.  They are looking and learning what they like.

Finally, they are having a unique opportunity to hear the artist speak about the work and meet them individually.  So even if someone is not particularly drawn to a certain photographer’s work, hearing the photographer speak about it will still give a deeper appreciation and understanding.  The opportunity to hear an artist passionately talk about their project and then make a personal connection to him or her is priceless and adds another level of connection to the photograph.

Leading up to the event, I was hoping and praying and having some anxiety dreaming that all of these pieces would fall into place and WAWA would come off as I intended.  Success!  Beyond success.  Beyond my wildest dreams success.

People were blown away by the photography, the concept, the photographers themselves.  While eating sushi and drinking the Westside Fizz, guests were milling about and getting a sense of their favorite photographs.  Then after the photographers spoke, people wanted to have a few more minutes to take another look, and many people completely changed their minds after hearing the story behind the imagery.

Calling out the numbers was exciting, and sometimes when a piece was chosen, you could hear an “oh no!”.  There were a few occasions where tackling another guest was proposed, but luckily we were able to generally discourage it (after all, all of these images are part of these photographers regular collections and very much for sale).  Even though there were definitely some “favorite” images in the room, most people were drawn to very different work, so even people with higher numbers (meaning they were near the end to choose) ended up selecting one of their top choices.

After the selection process, most guests stayed and spoke to the photographer whose piece they ended up with, and the gallery was buzzing.  People were excited, inspired. . . they were collectors, and they were loving it.

introducing the photographers: Laura Griffin, Lori Vrba, Kathleen Robbins, Heidi Kirkpatrick, Jeff Rich and Lisette de Boisblanc

Read this great write-up in the Atlanta Business Chronicle!

Evan Baden

Mary Ellen Bartley (Fraction Winner)

Maude Clay

Daniel Coburn

Jess Dugan

Hugo Fernandes

Michael Grace-Martin

Daniel Grant

Michael Grecco

Jennifer Henriksen

Margaret Hiden

Alexi Hobbs

Clay Lipsky (The Ten Winner)

Coco Martin

Heather Musto

Wynn Myers

Laura Noel

Jesse and Jason Pearson

Jacinda Russell

Trois Vitesses by Alexi Hobbs

Falling/Fame by Laura Noel

Nettie-01 by Clay Lipsky

Untitled diptych by Mary Ellen Bartley

EyeLashes by Michael Grecco

The solo show we did with Lori Vrba in New Orleans last year got a huge shout-out in PDN (Photo District News).  The online version is already live, print version coming out momentarily.

Jeff Rich’s solo show opens this Friday night, and Bearings Atlanta wrote a nice feature:

And Kathleen Robbin’s new work (which I gushed about here) was featured on NPR’s The Picture Show blog.

Yeah, that’s right.  We’ve got some awesome photographers.

Lori Vrba and Wisteria Restaurant chef Jason Hill collaborated on a menu that fit her photography perfectly – shrimp and grits, iron-skillet cornish hen, beef tenderloin with a mountain of braised greens mac and cheese, whoopie pies and ice cream for dessert. I will be full (and blissfully happy) for a week.

ArtFeast is by invitation only, and we had the most amazing table of guests.  Laughter, delicious food, gorgeous art – it couldn’t have been better.

Read more about it on Atlantamagazine.com’s food column, Covered Dish!

And some pictures (thank you to John Ramspott!). . .

A few months later we were showing six of her 30×30 photographs from her Flatlands series in our Outlands show, and they blew everyone away. That work was exhibited in seven different shows at that time (two solo and five group) and nominated for a major award.  How’s that for talent?

And now her new work, In Cotton, is starting to turn some major heads, and with good reason.  Three shows already, and she won the PhotoNOLA Review Prize just a few weeks ago.  Basically, she’s a rockstar (but why would I represent any less??).

But the big question is this – which image should I get for my personal collection? I have loved the Flatlands work for a long time now. I live with three large prints in my office (have I mentioned I love my job?). But the Cotton work just blows me away.

I vacillate daily between two images, so let’s put it up to a vote. Weigh in people, it takes a village.

04.01.12

Category: Art Reviews |
Tags: Apollo program, Baby Bitty, Egg is Quiet, featured, Hasselblad camera, Her Idea, I Remember You, Jennifer Schwartz Gallery, Like a Wish, Lolita, Lori Vrba, Moth, Mummy,NASA, North Carolina, Sally Mann, Southern Comfort, The New Mothers

Lori Vrba, I Remember You, 2011, digital archival print, roughly 35 x 35 inches. Image courtesy Jennifer Schwartz Gallery.

In Lori Vrba’s photography, comfort comes from rich visual textures and poignancy of natural surroundings. Her show Southern Comfort, at Jennifer Schwartz Gallery until January 28, is a mélange of photographs that speaks to a love of the medium. Yet within the works resides a tension and unease between the photographer and the people and places around her.

Her images, painstakingly printed by hand in her basement darkroom on silver gelatin, are a sepia-tinged ode to her surroundings. Vrba shoots with a Hasselblad, the Swedish brand used throughoutNASA’s Apollo program and during the first moon landing. Instead of the craggy desert of the moon, however, Vrba’s Hasselblad captures the roughly textured surface of her North Carolina environs, drawing out the otherworldly in clover and grass.

Lori Vrba, An Egg is Quiet, 2011, toned silver gelatin in glass box, 8 x 8 inches. Image courtesy the artist.

Vrba’s photography seeks the alien in the familiar. Vrba’s children are the subject matter of nearly all of her photographs, often displayed holding totemic items like birds’ nests and moths in An Egg is Quiet (2011) and Moth (2011). The props can border on the macabre, like naked baby dolls with fixed eyes staring nowhere and shroud-like veils in Bitty Baby (2011) and Her Idea (2011). The resulting photographs place Vrba, and subsequently the viewer, on the outside of these charmed yet eerie scenes.

Lori Vrba, Mummy, 2011, toned silver gelatin in glass box, 8 x 8 inches. Image courtesy the artist.

There is a quality to Vrba’s work that vacillates between horror-film fodder and brooding contemplation. The light has a thin, translucent quality that gives a ghostly glow to the grim-faced children, who either glower at the camera or frown at the objects of their scrutiny in photographs likeMummy (2011) and Like a Wish(2011).

Viewers will likely find similarities between Vrba’s work and that of Sally Mann, an artist Vrba acknowledges as an inspiration. Yet Vrba’s photographs lack the overt aggression of Mann’s images: the precocious sexuality captured in Mann’s photographs of her children is apparent in works likeJean Skirt (2009), which offers the viewer a crotch-view of Vrba’s daughter in a cut-off denim micro-miniskirt against a chicken-wire fence, but her daughter’s face has been cropped out, so we are not confronted with the challenging gaze that Mann’s daughters return in works like The New Mothers.

Lori Vrba, Jean Skirt, 2009, toned silver gelatin, 15 x 15 inches. Image courtesy the artist.

In her photographs of her children, Mann creates tableaus of tension-starring stylized Lolitas with feral gazes. Vrba’s photographs seem more those of an enthralled observer bearing witness to the strange and precocious encounters between her children and nature.

The sculptural works in Southern Comfort represent this encounter with the result of child and nature melding into a chimeralike entity. Miss Francesis a children’s dress form endowed with a skirt of chicken wire and branches woven with birds’ nests and lichen, while scraps of photographs with wide-eyed faces peer out from the tangle. A broad butterfly made of feathers is pinned on the chest, reinforcing the effect of a foundling emerging from a tangled forest, half-man, half-animal.

Lori Vrba, Miss Frances, 2011, dress form, prints, and various found materials, dimensions vary. Image courtesy Jennifer Schwartz Gallery.

In the artist talk for this show, Vrba describes the states of being an artist and having children as uncomfortable yet beautiful. This discomfort permeates her works, capturing not only a human wonderment toward life, but also the condition of not knowing. There are insurmountable barriers between us and those we love; we can never know them fully, and we are entranced when they surprise us. Such is the relationship between man and nature. No amount of scientific knowledge can diminish the beauty found in small things, the patterns of a moth’s wing, the pigments of a feather, the glow of dusk transforming a landscape you thought you knew. And in that there is comfort.

The Jennifer Schwartz Gallery will be displaying Lori Vrba’s exhibition, Southern Comfort, through January 28, 2012. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11AM to 5PM.

Last year I was a portfolio reviewer for PhotoNOLA (for those who don’t know, it’s a fantastic photography festival run by JSG’s very own Jennifer Shaw).  I met wonderful people, saw great photography, and generally partied my butt off.  This year was no different, only I didn’t review, so there was more time for the meeting and partying.

A highlight was going with Dave Anderson to “The Block”.  (Dave’s photo project, “One Block”, chronicled a single block in the lower 9th ward of New Orleans for three years after Katrina. Aperture published the book last year, and we did an exhibition in October.)  We walked the block with the book, and he pointed out where many of the photographs were taken.  And then we had the most amazing evening at Marcus’ house – the friend Dave stays with on the block.  Marcus is the most interesting, dynamic, under-stated person I have ever met.  He fixed us a huge meal, taught us a celebrity sighting game and gave us a tour of his extensive (and incredibly humorous) folk art collection.

And the eating didn’t end there.  Or the seeing photography or the meeting new people.  I love New Orleans, and I applaud Jennifer Shaw and her whole team for putting together yet another fantastic, educational and motivating photography festival.

with four of my super talented girls - Heidi Kirkpatrick, Lisette de Boisblanc, Kathleen Robbins and Heidi Lender

with Dave Anderson, reenacting our first meeting

bacon ice cream sundae - a life-changing culinary experience

getting my Nola on

Provocative old guard and ambitious new leaders. Masterpieces and can’t-miss marvels. This is Atlanta’s arts scene—and these are the 20 scene stealers changing the conversation.

Jennifer Schwartz is on a mission. This year, the 30-something gallery owner created The Ten (thetenphoto.com), a monthly online exhibit of 10 images with a low price point that entices new collectors to get their feet wet in investing in fine art photography. With the success of that project, she takes her show—Crusade for Collecting—on the road. “I am going on a 10-week, 10-city tour, where I do pop-up shows featuring works from incredible emerging photographers from across the country.” 1000 Marietta St. NW, 404.885.1080, jenniferschwartzgallery.‌com

 Juried by David Bram, Fraction Magazine

About the Juror:  David Bram is the editor, founder, and curator of Fraction Magazine, an online venue dedicated to fine art, contemporary photography. Fraction Magazine brings together diverse bodies of work by established and emerging artists from around the globe. Fraction Magazine was founded in 2008and has shown portfolios from more than 200 photographers.

Theme:  Lust

Lust is a passionate or overwhelming desire.  People lust for power, money, objects.  You can have a lust for life or an intense and eager enthusiasm.  And of course, there is sexual lust.

As an artist, what do you lust for?  What moves you to create?  What does lust look like?

A powerful image goes beyond the aesthetics of the subject matter and creates an emotional response in the viewer.  A strong and consistent emotional narrative in a body of work binds the imagery together in a deeper way than content alone.

This theme gives you the opportunity to elicit a powerful feeling in the viewer.

Show me lust.  Make me feel a passionate and overwhelming desire for something, anything.  Make me care about what you have to say and how you say it. 

Submissions:  You may enter up to five images.  Please email your submissions to submissions@jenniferschwartzgallery.com.  In the email body, please include your name and contact information.  Also include a numbered title list, date, and finished print size for each attachment you send.  Attach the jpegs of your images to the email (72dpi, 700 pixels on the long side).  Zip files are preferred.  Title your images to include your last name and image number (Schwartz1, Schwartz2, Schwartz3, etc.)

Submission deadline:  Monday, January 16 by midnight, EST

Submission fee:  $35 for 5 images.  After your submission is received, you will be emailed a PayPal invoice for your submission fee.  You may choose to mail a check to the gallery if you do not wish to pay online.

Notification:  Entrants will be notified by February 1 via email.  Accepted work should be framed according to specific guidelines provided at time of notification and delivered to the gallery by March 9.  Make certain your finished print is of exceptionally high quality and represents well the image that was emailed to us.  Any finished/framed work not meeting the framing or print quality guidelines will be turned away at the discretion of the gallery owner.

Exhbition dates:  March 23 to May 12

Winners:  In addition to the photographers whose work is selected for the exhibition, there will be three grand prize winners.  The Fraction Winner will have his or her work featured in an upcoming issue of Fraction Magazine.  The Gallery Winner will have an additional exhibition opportunity at Jennifer Schwartz Gallery.  And The Ten Winner will be invited to participate in The Ten (www.thetenphoto.com).

Sales:  All work in this exhibition will be for sale.  Guidelines for pricing will be discussed with those selected for participation.  Jennifer Schwartz Gallery will retain 50% of sales, and 50% will go to the photographer.

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