'Nuff said

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From www.artsactionfund.org/artsvote/default.asp

PRC Benefit Auction this Saturday!

The time is near… Get your tickets and bids in now and come out and support the PRC in its largest and most important fundraiser of the year. For those not in town, absentee bids can be taken on any item, live or silent. I’ll get my pencil ready!

This is an elegant and fun event - the food by East meets West is excellent and plentiful, it includes all refreshments, dessert, coffee, and even parking (just rsvp before). And of course you also get fantastic company, a beautiful art deco space, and the opportunity to walk home with an amazing photograph (and did I mention all of them come framed?). Ticket info is below.

Preview the catalogue by clicking above or here. See you Saturday.

TICKETS: $70 per person, member; $75 per non-member.

This includes one copy of the auction catalogue, one paddle, buffet from East Meets West, beverages, and parking with advance reservations. Contact Cate Brennan at 617.975.0600 for tickets, reservations, and bids. Mastercard, Visa, checks, cash accepted.

AUCTION: Saturday, October 25, 2008
808 Gallery at 808 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

Reception and silent auction begins at 5:30pm;
Live auction begins at 7:00pm

I heart William Christenberry

Last night, I had the privilege to hear and meet William Christenberry at MassArt. He was in town again on the occasion of his Aperture show at MassArt (opening tonight). I was sick as a dog when he lectured at the PRC last year and if I could have, I would have crawled there. Thus, I was very excited he came back to Boston. (You can see images from that appearance on our flicker site.)

What a gentleman! He tickled us with his stories and enchanted us with his images. Best of all, he mentioned a new book from Steidl, Working from Memory, which I am eager to own.

Some quotes from him:

"My mother would approve of this one," (and note he apologized for saying ain't and other mild words, "it ain't rustic, worn out, and bullet ridden"

He quoted Emily Dickinson, "Memory is a strange bed"

Why did you start taking photos?...he replied he wanted a "record of something that has changed and will never reappear"

When asked advice he could give to the younger artists, "find something you really love," build a "love affair" with your subject and "work on that"

Covering Photography exhibition

Karl Baden sent around this announcement about an exhibition of books and book covers he curated at the Boston Public Library, which runs through December 31st.

The show is based upon Karl's amazing endeavor and resource, the Covering Photography archive and web site. This effort, as stated on the site, is a " resource for the study of the relationship between the history of photography and book cover design." In essence, he is collecting book covers that feature or riff upon famous and not so famous images. Poke around, it's fantastic!

I have pasted information below from his announcement, which details information for those who can and cannot attend the exhibition. Congrats Karl! I can't wait to see it.

From October 8th through December 31st, 2008, The Boston Public Library at Copley Square will be presenting the exhibition, Covering Photography: Imitation, Influence and Coincidence.

For those who will be able to see the show, here are the details:

Where: Rare Books and Manuscripts, Third Floor, McKim Building, Boston Public Library

700 Boylston St., Boston MA 02116

Hours: Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm

For those unable to make it, the introductory text below should give you a general idea:

Whether we buy a book, borrow it from a friend or withdraw it from the library, our purpose, in almost every instance, is to read it. If the book has an illustrated cover, we'll usually give it a brief glance; but even if we fall in love with that cover image and allow it to burn itself into our memory, it is really the content, not the cover of the book, that we are after... and this, dear reader, is as it should be.

The books in this exhibition, however, are not here because of their content; they are here because of their covers: storyline, subject matter... everything that takes place between the covers is, for the purposes of this show, secondary, if not incidental.

Why should we care about book cover illustrations? The quality of the design? The high level of craft? The originality of concept? All good reasons, but in this case not the right reasons. In fact, it may be argued that the unoriginality of these covers is what makes them worthy of examination.All of these books have been chosen because the images on their jackets reference, in some way, another image; a photograph, to be more precise: a photograph whose significance or popularity has earned it, or its maker, a place in the history of photography.

What?? Designers and illustrators stealing pictorial ideas from photographers and using them for their own purposes? Well, yes, and as things turn out, the practice is neither outrageous nor even uncommon. Creative individuals from every discipline have regularly appropriated the ideas of others, at the very least as a foundation to build on. Something once said by Sir Isaac Newton comes to mind:

"If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

But perhaps Newton is a bit too reverential. More to the point may be a quote by the composer Igor Stravinsky (also attributed to Pablo Picasso):

"Lesser artists borrow; great artists steal."

We live in a culture that remains current by continually recycling its past, and we have done so, to greater or lesser degree, for centuries. In fact, the more past we accumulate, the more we seem to rely on it; we source it for stimulation and rip it off for spare parts. Artists of all disciplines now mine the histories of art and culture as a matter of course, looking for imagery that may inspire them in, or provide justification for, their own works.

In the case of book covers, designers routinely rummage through monographs and anthologies of photographs, in search of source material that may serve as metaphor for the content of the books they have been commissioned to illustrate.

In this exhibition, each book cover is directly compared to a well-known photograph with which it has some degree of similarity. The amount of similarity varies, of course, and that is where the comparison can become interesting: Sometimes the connection is quite obvious; an instance of imitation or even blatant appropriation. In other cases it is more a question of the designer or illustrator being subtly, perhaps even unconsciously, influenced by a particular photographer or photograph. Finally, there may be no direct, or even indirect, trail of influence, but rather, for lack of a better term, an 'intelligent' coincidence; ie, an idea or visual trope that is, as Carl Jung might have put it, part of our collective cultural consciousness. This last type of connection may manifest itself in a variety of ways by groups or individuals who have no obvious connection to each other.

By comparing book cover art to the photographs from which they are, or may be, derived, Imitation, Influence and Coincidence attempts to pose the questions: How far can this notion of influence be stretched before it breaks? How is visual syntax processed by culture, and when does influence end and coincidence begin? Rather than providing specific answers for individual cases, the examples in this exhibition have been assembled in the hope that we may give thought to some of the more complex ideas these questions raise, and, perhaps, be prompted to raise some questions of our own... or at least have a more visually compelling experience during our next bookstore visit.

Guess the image....

Guess the photo by placing your thoughts in the comments. I'll post the answer there in a day or so.

The above image is....

1.) An abstract photo featured on the excellent blog i heart photograph
2.) A newly-discovered strain of colorful sea anemones
3.) Brain cells of a lab mouse glowing with fluorescent proteins
4.) An image from David Maisel's newest series
5.) A behind-the-scenes look at the newest candy in development at Nestle's Willy Wonka Candy Company

UPDATE (10/11): Look in the comments for the answer!!

Cute Overload

No, it's not because I am newly engaged that I share the following...

Maybe it is because I am very excited to be going to the Topsfield Fair today and seeing all sorts of judging and shows of bunnies, chickens, calves, flowers, art, and vegetables. If you have never been and live in New England, this amazing agriculture fair (established in 1818) is a must. I will give you an update later -- especially on the flower arranging section. These folks are brutally honest in their comments on composition.

Cakewrecks pointed me to the blog Cute Overload and there are some pretty excellent and funny pics over there. Enjoy!