New Blog & Flickr pics from Fotofest and SPE

The PRC is test running a blog, which will launch SOON...ah the anticipation. All four of us have been secretly posting for a month or so, so when we do announce the url, be sure to read all the posts! The long and short of it is, I am having trouble knowing what to post there and what to post here! As many folks who work at small non-profits, small departments, or just plain small places, life and work mix readily. As a proud blog "mother," I want to give fair time and effort to both (my heart is, of course, still with my first born). I think I've decided the tone will be different, so even if I post on a topic on the work blog, be sure to tune in here for the other side of the story and more fun, witty banter. I'll post the "birth" next week.

Below is my recent post announcing some pics from Fotofest and SPE on flickr.

LKB here again, aka the girl whose brain is mush from being gone for most of March and then deinstalling and installing the next 2 weeks. I promise that I will write many inspired posts giving you the inside scoop as well as tips for these two important industry events in the coming month. However, until I regain my brain cells after looking at what I estimate to have been over 100 portfolios, my flickr pics will suffice.

I just posted on the PRC's flickr site dozens of fun photographs of Fotofest and SPE. Both were amazing and I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Houston and Denver, especially the latter. You can see the company with whom I reviewed in Fotofest's Meeting Place session one here and see an overview of all of the SPE 2008 sessions and events here. So, go ahead and enjoy the PRC's flickr pics here or by clicking the above montage!

(To entice you further, there are some great pics of new SPE board member and recent PRC lecturer Arno Minkkinen and some behind-scenes party pics.)

ABOVE FLICKR MONTAGE - CLOCKWISE STARTING IN THE UPPER LEFT:
David Coleman of UT's HRHRC photography collection chats with former Bostonian Jim Stone at Fotofest;
A Fotofest opening - that is Aperture's Lesley A. Martin on the right, our next juror for our PRC juried show!;
Jonathan Singer, John Craig, and new SPE board member Arno Minnkinen look at their fuji prints at the SPE closing dance party;
At the SPE opening reception, from left, Thomas Gustainis, and MassArt alums Caroline Burghardt, Rebecca Sittler, and Bruce Myren (latter now an MFA student at UConn).

Happy Easter/ Happy Spring!

Hope you enjoyed a sunny day! To help celebrate, I went on a holiday picture hunt. Pictured above is an installation from the Annual Washington Post's "Peep Show" contest. You can read more about the creation pictured above, below. Read more about the contest here and see a slideshow of 37 of the more than 800 entries here.

"'Peep Art' -- a reinterpretation of the Pop Art movement and homage to Andy Warhol and his muse Edie Sedgwick -- is a revolutionary concept taking the Peeps Diorama Contest to an entirely different level." ...

What would Warhol think of the diorama?

"He'd think it was awesome," Greenstein says. "Don't you think, Jane? I think it's like the embodiment of his concept of pop art."

- Jane Dokko, 30, Washington, and Ilana Greenstein, 31, Alexandria

AICA awards update! Picture Show gets silver but feels like gold

Here is an update on the 2008 AICA USA awards from the New England region, which were held about 3 weeks ago at the end of Feburary. Yep, you can always count on me to post on the latest, most fast breaking news. HOWEVER, yesterday, an audio review of our awards was released on Chicago's super online arts podcast mag, Bad at Sports. (Well, actually, there is a reason - I was gone for 10 of those days...and promise to do a roundup soon on Fotofest & SPE.)

I am proud as a peach to report that the exhibition Picture Show that I curated at the PRC (and Boston Cyberarts) was mentioned very positively for 4 minutes! In the category of “Best Show in a University or College Gallery," Picture Show took second place at AICA NE, but as stated above, I feel like gold. Thanks again to AICA NE, George Fifield of Cyberarts, and all of the artists in Picture Show.

Art critic Greg Cook (of the Boston Globe, Boston Phoenix, and of course, the blog, New England Journal of Aesthetic Research) joined Matt Nash, James Nadeau, and Christian Holland of Big RED & Shiny for the Bad at Sports roundtable at MIT's Stata Center. You can listen to the roundtable of these fine folks discuss all of the shows and more here. If you want to hear the Picture Show part specifically, fast forward about 20 minutes in.

Supposedly, the AICA New England awards won't be held next year so they can concentrate on getting more members (they don't have any $ to do the awards, but each host museum, this year the Rose, helps out). I hope they continue it, as the evening was great for the whole community, allowing big and little guns like me and us to come together. It was truly great. Big RED and Greg Cook hope to maybe have the ceremony morph into something, read more about that here and here.

Here is a round up of AICA and Picture Show links:

• Greg Cook posts on the AICA awards the night they happened
• BRS's blog Our Daily Red gives the AICA rundown as well
• See pics of the Picture Show installation at the PRC here
• Boston Phoenix named Picture Show one of the best of 2007
• Matt Nash's review of Picture Show in Big, Red, and Shiny
• Mark Feeney's review of Picture Show in the Boston Globe
• Greg Cook on the Musee Patamechanique in the Boston Globe

Go west!

I am off on a whirlwind tour -- first stop Houston, Texas for Fotofest, then to Denver, Colorado for the Society of Photographic Education conference. Overall, I'll be gone half of March. So, posting and blog maintenance will be few and far between. I have never been to Fotofest, so I am hoping to pace myself for what will be around 50 reviews over 4 days. I'm in session 1 in good company and look forward to seeing many reviewer and reviewee friends and meeting new ones.

Bruce and I are arriving in Denver early to hit a few confluences on the 40th parallel. (Watch for a pic from the road.) It's always fun at SPE and gets better every year. Highlights of the schedule are sure to be Patrick Nagatani and Edward Burtynsky, as well as welcoming new board member Arno Minkkinen (who recently spoke at the PRC to a sold out crowd) and catching up with SPE friends. Yeehaw!

ABOVE IMAGE: Santa Fe Trail, from the library at my alma mater, University of Texas at Austin's PCL map collection. Hook 'em horns.

Remain in Light

I am always a fan of artist-led, grass roots projects. Recently, I got an email from some fine folks launching a new publication for emerging photographers called Remain in Light, including Boston's own Shane Lavalette. You have until midnight to submit a handful of jpgs, with no trip to the post office needed. (Given the PRC's recent submission postmark deadline, I can only imagine the scene at Boston's main branch on Feb. 15th!) Read more about Remain in Light and the submission specs here.