Christina Marcantonio Final Project Proposal

1. Concept/ Subject

My final project this semester will be a performative project using nature and fabric scraps to create an abstract image. My intention is two fold: explore color relativity theory and highlight the relationship between textiles/ fabrics and natural materials. I’d also like to get people thinking about waste, detritus, what is left over from the artistic process. A larger idea I’d like to bring to mind is consumerism and clothing waste in our culture. 

Overall this will be an aesthetically driven project. I also hope to have fun and play with these materials with an emphasis on discovery. I’ll be thinking about Land Art/ Earthworks of the 1960-70’s Andy Goldsworthy, Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt. 

2. Technical Approach INPUT

I intend to focus my technical approach on POV, varying from taking high angle shots with up close shots. I will stay with my 50mm lens as a constant. I will focus on Color expression and consistent palette within the project. I will vary my aperture and speed but I will most likely stay low with my ISO. I hope to have some weather interventions, like wind or snow or rain. I may experiment with low shutter speed to render blur and take the project further into abstraction.

3. Technical Approach OUTPUT

Color photos absolutely! I think ideally they would live as prints. I like the idea of them large scale, immersive images.  Even large scale projected images would be interesting. I will most certainly consider order.

 

RESPONSE FROM REBECCA:

Your interest in employing, salvaging, collaging, and exposing the byproducts of the art-making process is a rich and complex area to explore, and there’s so much potential to build a reciprocal relationship between your tactile and lens-based practices.

The 50mm prime is a good way to create a consistent variable, seeing as the eye sees, and minimizing the obvious attention to the image-making apparatus in your work. All of your ideas about your technical input feel spot-on.

Look at Steven Duede, a painter-turned-photographer, particularly his Evanescence Project and Citizens of the World. When thinking broadly of still life, I always return to Laura Letinsky, who also considers notions of waste and consumerism in her work, particularly through carefully constructed images like those from To Say It Isn’t So and Fall.  Denis Roussel is a photographer who used alternative processes including photograms, cyanotypes, and paper negatives to look at waste, recycling, and natural objects. Greg Ruffing’s Yard Sale images are a bit of a departure from the constructed shots you’re describing, but may be of interest; perhaps more directly pertinent is David Welch’s Material World . While it gets into a new medium, consider checking out experimental filmmaker Jodie Mack, who constructs images in time similar to what you’re describing doing with space. You may be interested in her film The Grand Bazaar, though I don’t know that it’s currently available for streaming, but consider watching her short 16mm films from the Wasteland series, including Wasteland No. 1: Ardent, Verdant and Wasteland No. 2: Hardy, Hearty. Look at Shana and Robert Parke Harrison for work that intersects sculptural and photographic practice, as well as Rebecca Horn, whose work you may already know; her focus is on the body and performance, but also deals with the relics and documentation of sculptural practice.

Let’s look together at your first shoot and allow the early images to guide you into new territy and developments. What you’ve already begun shooting for your assignment work this semester is a great starting point.

–R