Month: <span>May 2017</span>

Fresh+Luck                                                                                           © Stacy Blint

 

Stacy Blint creates art that captures experiences, possibilities, and instances of the human condition. Looking at Stacy’s work is a visual treat. I am reminded that art is a free-flowing, organic force that combines everything life has to offer. I like her multi-disciplinary approach and her use of humour. You can see a creative mind at work. To see more, check out her website.

I asked her eight questions about her work and her current projects.

 

Tell me a little about yourself. Where are you from, and where do you live now?

I was born and raised in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Birthplace of Les Paul, inventor of the electric guitar, and home to three Nike missile sites during the Cold War. Waukesha also has long held the distinction of being part of one of the most segregated metropolitan areas in the country.

My father was a pharmacist and owned his own pharmacy. When I was young my drawings covered the walls in his store. A woman with a turkey on her head in the shape of a bouffant hairdo. Lots of princesses and cubes. It was my grandmother who taught me to draw three-dimensional shapes. Hearts, stars, rectangles, triangles; with my special power I could make any of them contain space.

In 1988, I moved to New York City to study painting at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, situated between Fort Greene and Bedford-Stuyvesant. I arrived at the height of both the crack and AIDS epidemics. This is something I have written about extensively in a soon to be released manuscript.

Currently I live in Wisconsin and enjoy its rich and not so distant history of pioneers and settlers. Compared to other middle western states, Wisconsin itself is somewhat eccentric.

There are the serial killers; Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, Walter Ellis, David Spanbauer. The Green Bay Packers, beer, cheese, and proximity to Lake Michigan round out the offering. Family is also here. My father’s grandparents were the first generation in America, settling as dairy farmers in Wisconsin from Switzerland.

I also have an amazing and beautiful 16 year old daughter. My life partner is the brilliant poet Mike Hauser. Professionally I work as a creative director.

 

Pink+City                                                                        © Stacy Blint

 

I have been impressed with your collages, photos, and poetry. What do you consider to be your primary medium?

Listening and being. For as long as I can remember there has been a dialog taking place within the work itself, often between the modalities of the written and the visual. There have been moments over the years that these forms have merged to become installation, video, or performance. For me it’s really about what the work requires independent of medium.

 

Simone                                         © Stacy Blint

 

What themes are you exploring in your work?

Obsolescence. Obliteration. Emergence. Encasement. Humor.

I attempt to create a dialog between the visual and the written, to capture experiences, possibilities, and instances of the human condition—its splendor, its vulgarity, and its weird and comic manner. I am interested in exploring the domestic, the daily, the mundane, the overlooked, dreams, family, love, death, and relationships in my work.

 

Sampler                                                                              © Stacy Blint

 

What projects are you working on these days?

Currently I am in the process of documenting The Art Bunker, a site-specific environment that draws on a strong affinity with one of my earliest influences, the Wisconsin artist Mary Nohl.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Nohl_Art_Environment

 

Additionally, I cultivate a daily studio practice that includes writing, photography, and mixed media pieces. I like to make things with my hands and am fascinated by the hauntology present in the layering of these pieces.

 

Tell me a bit about your Disappearing Books project.

Based on the premise that with each breath we are erased a little, Disappearing Books is an ongoing multidisciplinary project that began about 7 years ago. A disappearing book is a one of a kind piece of art. As the reader ‘reads’ the book it’s original form is obliterated. It cannot be ‘read’ the same way twice.

There is a mail art component to these pieces. To date 19 books have been documented and shared with people in several countries, including Japan, Canada, England, Germany, Austria, South Africa, and America. As the concept evolves I find myself drawn to explore more performative aspects.

http://www.disappearingbooks.com/

 

Who or what inspires you?

Nature inspires me, unexpected combinations or words and images inspire me, music inspires me. Inspiration can come from anywhere and is most powerful when informed by an acute awareness that time is short.

 

Cerrusite                                                                     © Stacy Blint

 

One final question: Can you tell me briefly about a couple of artists I may not be familiar with yet but you would recommend checking out?

These are a few creators I draw inspiration from:

Bruce La Mongo, Artist

Michaela Mück, Artist

Mike Hauser, Writer

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6LsqnSATqgySnFEQkgtUDNYcms/view

Ferdinand Bardamu (aka Sascha Skotton), Photographer and Writer

http://faq-magazine.com/magazine/2017/41/taxi-driver.html

Jon Mueller, Musician

Kerensa Demars, Dancer

http://www.sanfranciscoflamenco.com/#home-section

Typos & brevity c/o technology

http://www.stacyblint.com/

 

Mermaids                                                                                © Stacy Blint

 

Many thanks to Stacy for doing this interview. I’m so appreciative of her thoughtful answers that provide insight into her work. Her art is always a source of inspiration.

 

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nostalgia, baby boomers, Toronto, 1981, film photography, black and white,
Gerrard East and Ontario Street, Toronto, 1981    © Avard Woolaver

Nostalgia can be described as a sentimental longing for the past. It comes from the Greek nostos (homecoming) and algos (pain) and is thought to have been derived from Homer’s The Odyssey.

With baby boomers reaching their senior years, nostalgia seems to be their drug of choice. Advertisers target boomers with Beatles music, retro fashions, and even long dead actors such as Marilyn Munroe selling perfume. While boomers seem to be lapping it up, not everyone is crazy about the nostalgia bug. Heather Havrilesky writes in The Washington Post, “While griping about boomer nostalgia has become a somewhat common art, the cultural impact of that nostalgia transcends mere annoyance. Through sheer repetition and force of will, boomers have so thoroughly indoctrinated us into their worldview that we all now reflexively frame most current affairs through the lens of another generation’s formative experiences.” Abbey Hoffman might say not to trust anyone under 50!

I myself am a baby boomer. Born in 1958, I was six years old when the Beatles came to North America. I sang “A Hard Day’s Night” in my Grade One classroom, watched the moon landing on a fuzzy black and white TV, and took my Diana camera to Expo ’67 in Montreal. While I have nostalgia for those early years, the time I miss most was when I was in my early twenties, studying photography at Ryerson in Toronto.

The photo at the head of this blog captures the time that I am nostalgic for. It was taken in my neighborhood in downtown Toronto in my first year of study. Everything was new and fresh, conversations were stimulating, photography was invigorating. Several of my classmates from that year became lifelong friends. Since returning to those days is impossible, I can make the journey with my retro photographs. It’s the next best thing.

Gerrard East and Ontario Street, Toronto, 1981, is from the series: Toronto Days

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© Michael Morissette

Toronto photographer Michael Morissette is equally at home photographing in the solitude of nature, or in a busy urban environment.  His use of colour, light, and graphic elements make his images memorable. A middle school art teacher, he finds time for creative projects with his students as well as those he does in his own time. I have known Michael since 1980 when we started studying photography at Ryerson in Toronto. His amiable and contemplative nature has always been visible in his work.

I asked him eight questions about his work and his current projects. (Our on-line conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.) Check out more of his wonderful work on Flickr, Facebook, and Instagram!

Elliot Erwitt sums up my thoughts on verbalizing my photography: “The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.”

 

Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from, and where do you live now?

 

I was born and raised on the West Coast, until the call of photography study took me to Ryerson, in Toronto, in my early 20s.  After a brief stint in the oil fields of Alberta to help pay for school, I loaded up my Chevy van and headed east. And aside from a five-year period of work and travel away, I’m still calling Toronto home after more than 30 years. It’s a city rich in culture, and a wellspring of photographic material. There is much I still miss about Vancouver, especially the natural beauty, but my roots have gone deep in Toronto.

 

What subject matter attracts you, and why?

 

It’s not easy to define myself as a photographer, as I’m attracted to such a wide range of subject matter, but I would say that I’m a documentarian more than a creator. Virtually all my work is as I saw it, with little manipulation. However, I do shoot RAW, and really enjoy the process of bringing my images to fruition in Lightroom. Like you, I cut my photographic teeth in black and white, hand processed and printed. The computer is a way of returning to the craft of image making.

© Michael Morissette

 

Can you tell us about the projects you are working on these days?

 

I’ve recently self-published a book titled Water & Colour, which consists of a series of photographs documenting the effects of rust and decay on well-aged automobiles from a wrecking yard near Toronto. Reflecting the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, the beauty in decay, the photographs display a varied palette, degrading from the original vivid vehicle colours to the oranges and yellows of years of corrosion.

© Michael Morissette

 

And presently I’m working on a series titled “Dia y Noche,” from a carnival ground in Baja, Mexico, taken in the early morning light, and in the darkness of evening. The intense colours of the shrouds covering each booth at a time void of human activity contrasts interestingly with the artificial light of nighttime. The human presence also adds another important visual element.

© Michael Morissette

 

How has your background in graphic arts shaped your vision?

 

Studying graphic design prior to photography instilled in me an instinctive recognition of elemental line, shape and form, which lends itself well to photography. It’s been a valuable aid in the growth of my photographic composition. And, interestingly, I’m still using the same tools and techniques from that experience in my art classroom today.

© Michael Morissette

 

What’s your state of mind when you’re taking good photos? Do you think there’s any connection between your mood or mindset and the results you get?

 

I believe my mood is clearly enhanced as I photograph. Time passes quickly and I find, at certain times when everything’s right, that I’m immersed in a zone of creative pleasure. It can occur deep in a forest, in the urban grunge of a back alley, or on a busy downtown street. There’s really nothing else quite like it. Creativity, in any aspect, is very important to me. This is a belief that I try to instill in my students.

 

Your photos sometimes contain funny twists. Tell me about the role of humour in your photography.

 

Humour for me is both a defense mechanism and a survival tool, particularly in my day job, attempting to nurture creativity in overactive adolescents. Without humour, life, at times, can be pretty grim. Thus, if I can find something out there that brings a smile to my mind, or my face, I try to capture it.

© Michael Morissette

 

Who, or what inspires you?

 

Contrasts, oddities, contradictions, but most of all, light. Light is so important to my work. And beauty, in whatever forms that takes.

One Piano, Three Years                         © Michael Morissette

 

One final question: Can you tell me briefly about a couple of photographers I may not be familiar with yet but you would recommend checking out?

 

There are a few people I’ve been following on Instagram that are well worth mentioning. Mustafa Seven does some remarkable street photography in Turkey.  Sefa Yamak, also working in that region, does some compelling street portraits; and finally, Paul Brouns does some really great graphic architectural work in Northern Europe.

 

I’ll close with another quote from Elliot Erwitt: “To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

 

Many thanks to Michael for doing this interview. I’m so appreciative of his thoughtful answers that provide insight into his work. His images are always a source of inspiration.

© Michael Morissette

 

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