On the second Thursday of every month I pack up my family and we all head to downtown Abilene for the celebration of creativity and culture know as ArtWalk. The Center for Contemporary Arts is always a favorite stop because I’m a huge fan of modern art and I always have to checkout the exhibit in their dedicated photography gallery.

This month I was excited to see the retrospective of fine art portrait photographer Eleonora Ghioldi. While wandering through the gallery looking at the painterly silver gelatin prints I heard a woman huffing in disgust. I turned around to look and saw a woman with two tween daughters. One girl pointed at an image and said “Look Mom, she doesn’t have any clothes on.” The woman grabbed the girls hands and ushered them out of the gallery ranting about how The Center “shouldn’t have such exhibits because children could walk in there”, and she was “going to find someone to talk to about this”!

I looked around the gallery for the obscene images the woman had labeled “filth” and couldn’t find them. All I saw were haunting beautiful images of what it means to be a woman in the quite, private moments. Ever since then I haven’t been able to get the incident out of my head. I wonder what was so objectionable? There was nothing salacious about the images. Unless the mere fact that they contain partial or implied nudity is it’s self objectionable?

The unclothed human form has been used in art to portray vulnerability, innocence, purity, love, lust, and pure celebration of God’s design since the beginning of time. I wonder if in the age of TMZ celebrity sex tapes we have lost the ability to distinguish between the lurid depiction of teen sex used to sell clothing at the mall and the sensitive portrayal of the female form used to illustrate her vulnerability and inner thoughts and feelings.

I wonder if the reason that nudity in art is subject to censorship is because we never see any positive portrayals of nudity apart from indiscriminate sex in movies and tv. I intend to continue taking my children to gallery openings and exposing them to art in all it’s forms. And I hope that when my daughter reaches an age when she starts to wonder about her worth and place in the world as a woman that the years of exposure to work like that of Ghioldi will counterbalance the influence of Go Daddy ads and People Magazine covers.

Maybe we could all benefit from viewing a little more art and a little less Desperate Housewives.

"Cigarrillo" by Eleonora Ghioldi

Here is my Funny Photo entry which won second place at the Brownwood Reunion Photo Contest. I had the idea for this image and thought it would turn out great with just a little bit of planning. It took about an hour and half to set up and shoot all the images for the final composite. It ended up taking 11 separate images layered together in Photoshop to create the final image.

I expected the image of Archer to take the longest, toddlers are notoriously difficult to photograph but he was quite cooperative. It ended up being the beer spray that took multiple take to capture properly, that and the grill flame took considerably more lighter fluid to reach an appropriate height than I had originally estimated.

Many art forms mimic the artistic mediums that came before it. Portrait photography is a way to paint a subject with light and has always been very influenced by the previous predominant form of portrait art, painting. I know it’s very popular right now for photographers to over expose an image to get that overly bright faded look. But the resulting blown highlights and loss of shadow in a lot of images I see make me long for the drama and visual texture brought by the rich shadows of an old masters painting.

In my own personal work I decided to explore the quiet, low key portrait. I wanted to produce a Vermeer-eque or Rembrandt-inspired portrait that would exhibit a quiet strength and draw the viewer in through subtle texture and the play of light and shadow. With my ever faithful model Leslie (my incredibly trusting and patient sister) and a few You Tube video on scarf tying I produced the following image. I am quite happy with the results and after entering it in the Brownwood Reunion Photo Contest, won first place in the Professional Division.

Hey all, don’t forget to enter your very best photographs in the Brownwood Reunion Photo Contest sponsored by the Brownwood Art Association. Photo bugs ages 8 and up have a chance to win prizes and show off their work at the newly renovated Art Center at 215 Fisk. Entries are only $5 so enter as many images as you like! We’ll be taking entries today from 6pm-8pm and tomorrow 1pm-4pm at the Art Center. We have entry forms and pens at the Art Center so just make sure your images are framed and ready to hang. See y’all there!

I’m looking for models for a personal project I’m working on involving fine art nudes in black and white. I’m looking for female models who for obvious reasons must be over 18 and comfortable signing a model release. I’ll be providing the models with fine art prints in exchange for their time. Please call me at 325-200-6404 if you are interested!

I love the 4th of July, it’s one of my favorite holidays. How can you not enjoy a holiday marked by BBQs, family picnics, potato salad, and the opportunity to legally set things on fire? With our current drought conditions I was concerned that our annual trip to Comanche for the fireworks show might not happen. Thankfully the fireworks show went on and we were able to stake out our favorite spot in the Oakwood Cemetery – it sounds creepier than it is. The cemetery is sparsely populated and an excellent vantage point with multiple exits with which to avoid traffic jams.

This 4th was special for me because it was my son’s first fireworks experience and it went pretty well! He was a bit startled at first – then he was spellbound (see his expression in the first photo). He enjoyed the show so much that he fussed when we left because he wanted to see more! Sorry Archer but you’ll have to wait til next year, until then here are some images I took this year.

Perhaps it’s because of the new baby but I have been super antsy lately, running around cleaning and rearranging my house. I have started a lot of decorating projects around my house, and one of them was creating a wall collage that went above my couch. It ended up looking perfect for my space and I’m loving it!! I wanted to create a space that would be our “family wall,” where I could switch out pictures of my kids as they grow without changing my wall completely.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that many of my clients have questions about how to arrange a wall collection (what sizes, how many pictures, where to put them, etc.). One of the things that I’m passionate about is helping my clients get their pictures ON the wall. I don’t want them to spend the kind of money they do to get their pictures only to have a bunch of 4×6 prints that sit in a storage box. That is exactly why I created wall collections for my clients. I want to inspire you to create a space that will make you smile every time you walk by. That is how I feel about my wall, and I want to share that with YOU- my clients, friends, and followers. If you are a client and have a space you’re looking to fill, I would love to work with you to help you find the perfect fit for you.

Below are some images of the Wall Collection I created for myself, I have many more arrangements both traditional and modern and I’ve put them in a fabulous little book available for you to flip through any time you come by the studio!

I was privileged to be able to speak last night as the Guest Artist at the Comanche Art Association’s meeting. It was great to meet all the artists there and be able to demonstrate Polaroid Image Transfers for them because it’s something that I really love to do. Even though I’m a professional photographer doing almost all my client work digitally, I’ve only owned a digital camera since 2008 and film still holds a very dear place in my heart. I love the grainy textural quality of real film in my personal art work, sometimes the crisp perfection of digital just doesn’t do the subject justice. And I’m not sure that the serendipitous, painterly quality of Polaroid Transfers can ever be reproduced in Photoshop.

You are probably asking “What is a Polaroid Image Transfer?” Polaroid image transfer is an alternative photographic process using peel-apart Polaroid film. An image is exposed onto Polacolor ER film by means of a slide printer, camera or enlarger. The film is pulled apart before complete development and the dye-laden negative is rolled onto another surface, such as watercolor paper. The dyes develop onto the other surface and the image is “transferred.” The image may then be manipulated and handcolored if desired. I often finish my Polaroid Transfers by enhancing the image with pastels and conte crayon, or drawing another image entirely on top of the image, using the transfer as a background. Each image is unique due to the physical properties of the transfer process. Polaroid image transfers provide an extremely versatile vehicle for the visual artist, allowing for images with a painterly quality, as well as for partially rendered images.

Here are a few Polaroid Transfers I’ve done in a series on flowers.

We had an awesome time at the Total Bridal Show this past Sunday in Abilene. With a wide variety of vendors, a fashion show, lots of brides to be, and a cake dive to award door prizes it was really one of the better wedding shows I’ve been to. We talked to a lot of brides and they will be hearing from us soon about the winner of our drawing. We will definately be back for the fall show – especially since we won “Best Booth” in the vendor contest!

I’m excited to announce that for the 4th year in a row I have had one of my artworks accepted into the Star of Texas Juried Art Exhibit. Competition is fierce and comes from all over the state, so I feel honored to be included with the other very talented artist in the show this year.

The piece selected is called “Frozen” and is a photograph of dead sunflowers collected on a trip to the dumpster behind my house if you can believe. Inspiration really is everywhere. Through careful composition and lighting the fragile and beautiful form of the plant is highlighted, and the black and white conversion lends it a haunting air of mystery I think. If you’d like to see it in person (and place you vote for People’s Choice- hint,hint) the show will be up at the Depot through Saturday February 19.