On June 23, I finished my senior capstone project at Antioch College. It is about the ties of people to fish, fish to water, and water to all in the form of a short documentary film. The Great Lakes Region not only harbors the Corn Belt, but also holds abundant life and value in its bodies of water. Fishing is prevalent in the inland rivers and on the Great Lakes themselves. Fishing practices have been handed down through generations, and fishing spans all socioeconomic statuses. Not only is there the catching of fish, but the work that anglers put into harboring healthy water ecosystems in order to snag those fish. I filmed fly fishing group meetings and their river ecosystem restoration, I boated with a charter fishing service and their customers, I shot a muskie fishing tournament and the anglers that participated, I fished for smallmouth bass in the northernmost lakes of Wisconsin, and I held baby sturgeon in my hands at a fish hatchery. The culture is a rich ecosystem in itself, holding many subcultures and spanning different types of trades and jobs. Using oral history methodologies to learn about my interviewees’ fishing practices and lives, I made this film to put a magnifying glass to the beauty of fish guts, hooks, waiting, and the thinking that encapsulates fishing in the Great Lakes Region. As I explored this culture, I discovered it is always shifting with the fish. As the fish adapt to new waters impacted by climate change and pollution, the people who are fishing reflect the changes in the environment they themselves are altering as they search for their game. This is more than a film about the environment, it is a watery portraiture of what it was when I saw it.
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A Changing Landscape: Connecting Catherine Opie and Frank Gohlke
When I leave the Midwest and journey far north, the familiarities of my home blink out like dying stars. The maples along the highway change to white pines and black spruce, the fertile fields of corn and soybeans bleed away until wetlands and tall hills blanket the earth’s crust, and the cars become more spread apart on the road until it’s just me. I start to feel as if I am changing; I feel like a computer that someone is restarting and silence drops like a curtain over my thoughts. When I travel into a new landscape, am I a new landscape myself? The land manipulates human beings and we manipulate nature in return, but I think the latter is most predominant now. It is one of the strangest feelings to feel nature manipulating me when I live in a world where changing landscapes are normal. With Untitled #9, Catherine Opie has changed a landscape drastically through her photographic technique. Untitled #9 was made in 2013 in an age full of environmental crisis, and I believe the unfocused landscape represents the unattached, unconcerned behaviour humans have about the land they live on and see. Catherine Opie has blurred out the details of a waterfall, perhaps Niagra Falls, by un-focusing her camera’s lens. With how she’s composed the photo, it feels like the viewer is standing right on the lip of the waterfall. The landscape is printed on large paper and because of its largeness, the falls feel like they’re hugging a viewer from all around and enveloping them, putting the viewer even more into the scene. The skyline is a short bar at the top of the photo and the falls curve grandiosely into the top left corner to form a half bowl of cascading water. Turquoise and white water spills over dark gray rocks. A light orange blooming in the sliver of skyline hints at a sunrise or sunset. Because the detail has been replaced by blurs, Opie is making a statement. Maybe this is actually how people see a landscape now; they see beauty as a whole, but not how they are affecting this beauty. Usually, we have to look close at the details to understand how we are disrupting ecosystems. Take for example, by building boardwalks over the rocks so we can get closer to the water, we obscure the sun from plants that cling to the rocks and drink in the mist, and we displace birds that make their nests in the cliffs. Opie’s blurred effect hints back to the Pictorialist photographic movement when photographers strived to make their pictures soft, less detailed and colorful. By developing their photos through the gum bichromate process and rubbing Vaseline over their lens, they believed they were making fine art because the end result for the photograph resembled a painting. Edward Steichen says he used the process to enrich fact rather than dilute it. Perhaps Opie isn’t really extracting detail in Untitled #9, but trying to add it. With the absence of detail, she is letting her viewers wonder about her underlying reasons for the unfocused effect. Maybe she is leaving room for viewers to paint their ideas onto the photograph. In contrast to Untitled #9, Frank Gohlke’s photograph is in focus and crisp. In Irrigation Canal, Albuquerque New Mexico, shapes are clear and angles are severe. Gohlke is portraying water just like Opie is, but he’s showing concrete enveloping water that has been displaced from its natural place, unlike the majestic falls running their natural course. In reality though, are the falls running their natural course? Gohlke is representing the truth and actuality of how much power humans have over the landscape--we can divert strong rivers and envelope them with man made structures--while Opie is subtly intoning that humans ignore this fact. These two photographs fit together well because they prove that it’s easy for people to manipulate landscapes--either with bulldozers of with artistic techniques. In Gohlke’s photo, the lines between the natural and artificial aspects of the landscape are blurred. A viewer can clearly see an artificial environment with the concrete-sided canal; plants aren’t healthily growing and they cling weakly to the edges of stagnant water in the canal. There’s damp mud around the murky water, and the mud combined with the vegetation seem to ruin the perfectly clean surface of the canal walls. In reality though, the mud and bushy plants are a part of the environment, which makes them a part of the image as well. Another distinguished difference Gohlke’s photograph has from Opie’s is that it is black and white, which sets a somber mood for me, a person born into a world of color photographs. In an article called Of Mother Nature and Marlboro Men by Deborah Bright, she says Frank Gohlke was a part of an exhibit with other photographers called the New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape. The New Topographics photographers “shun visual conventions of the picturesque” (Bright 6). Stylistically, both Gohlke and Opie’s photographs are similar in this way--Gohlke shows a man made (or man-altered) landscape rather than a beautiful waterfall, but then Opie shows a waterfall that is not crisp with details that people so crave to see in landscape photography. Frank Gohlke’s photo was made in 1974, which seems so long ago compared to Opie’s Untitled #9 she birthed in 2013. Both are illuminating, though, and they clue me into the fact that our environment has been struggling for a great while. Many times, pictures speak more than words, but how can we move people to change their destructive ways when even an image like Gohlke’s cannot? Does this mean that photographers documenting the melting glaciers are no more influential than Gohlke’s and Opie’s? Opie and Gohlke’s photographs share a similarity for me personally, because they both make me think about what is the secret, or key, to change. The phone rang two times, and then the connection crackled into life. “Hi! Is this Avis Parke?” “Yup.” When Avis Parke arrived at Antioch in 1948, she was 17 and the Civil Rights Movement was just beginning to flourish. Her words catapulted me into a time when Antioch was “spread out and spacious,” boys were for the first time allowed to enter girls’ dorms, and racial tensions were reaching a head between the College and the town of Yellow Springs. “Those were the days when Antioch was a dividing line between the North and South, and there was a lot of discrimination. Antioch was multiracial, but the town was definitely not. [The townspeople] had their behaviors and prejudices, whereas the College was trying to be liberal and open-minded,” Avis recounted. To read the rest of this article, click here to be directed to The Antioch Record, a student-run publication for the Antioch Community. Article on page 1 and 3 of the newspaper. I was given this assignment by Michael Casselli, my sculpture professor at Antioch College. The project went like this: everyday find an object/make an object from found things, pick it up, photograph it, write one sentence about it, and repeat for 30 days. 1 object, one sentence per day. Here are mine minus the writing, because I haven't found the writing yet. These objects were on display for 2 days on little shelves with our sentences tacked below each object they corresponded to. This is one of my favorite practices I did in college, and I have repeated this assignment when it wasn't a required assignment anymore. Searching for objects roots me in the now, and makes my eye curious. It makes a visual journal, a physical documentation of slivers of existence. Sometimes I do this out and about and try to find 30 objects in one day, sometimes I root through my things as I pack up to go somewhere and pick out 30 objects that are close to my heart to document them. I bend the rules a little. Here are the first 30 objects, my readymades, the curiosities of my eye. Artist statement for show: Oh my goodness, I could kiss you forever. Moments of time I’ve picked up named written about and collected. and I’ve created a timeline over 30 days but I’ve gone back 15 years, touched and brushed against objects long rotted away. My days, my years. I have finished my first academic year at Antioch College, and I can list a few things it feels like:
Finishing my first year is a relief, and a small success. It feels like a relief because I'm comfortable saying I can see myself at Antioch for the next 3 years. Antioch is difficult, and there are times when I've felt especially unsatisfied with my education. I have seen that I can handle my classes and what they ask of me, but I want to make more time for myself creating things that aren't related to my classes. For my next year at Antioch College, I want to feel more satisfied with my creativeness, because there were times when I felt like I was going day by day completing assignments and only doing what professors were asking of me. I handled that problem by distancing myself from Antioch's campus so I could get a breather to collect myself, but that created problems, such as lowering grades and more stress. Over co-op, I had an enlightening breakthrough with how I thought about Antioch, and I want to to revisit it and remember it more.
What it boils down to is that I am not satisfied with other people dictating what I should do during my downtime. When I have downtime, I want to do me, and not professor's assignments. The things is, I don't have much downtime at Antioch, which means I need to create it. During my two week break, which is happening right now, I need to figure out ways I can carve more time out for myself each day.
I am feeling hopeful about the next 3 years I am going to have at Antioch College. In the last year, I have made fantastic friendships that mean so much to me, I've made things I'm proud of, overall I have have been really, really happy, I have gone on adventures, and I've met really chill professors. I want you to check out the work I've done in the past year that I'm about to post under the tabs Photographs and Designs and Doodles, and don't be afraid to critique it. Critiques are good, I like critiques. Here you will experience a creation I made when I was obsessed with turkey vultures, was living living deep in a bitter winter, and hating Charles Fairbanks (my media professor) with a passion. Charles Fairbanks was teaching the class I made this music video for, and I think it is funny that I like any project that came out of that very frustrating time. Here it is: Rose Petal Ear, a found footage music video. The name of this band is Califone, the song is Rose, Petal, Ear, and the album it belongs to is Roots & Crowns.
I went back home for two weeks and accidentally smashed a mirror against the bathroom floor. It was possibly the most curious thing I experienced over my spring break because breaking something I had used for the past 4 years was suddenly changed, and it was surprising. It wasn't useless, I could look at myself fragmented into unrecognizable pieces, and the mirror seemed more beautiful. I cradled it in one hand and took it outside to look at how it mirrored the crocuses in the front yard, and I stuck it in the heartwood of the redbud tree that's been fading into death over the years. The blue sky looked different through the splintered surface. I reflected on how I have changed since being away at Antioch, how in a sense, I've been smashed and reconfigured with new opinions, emotions, and experiences. Being smashed isn't uncomfortable or bad, it's exciting. Coming back home is relaxing and there are new things that I learn and see. I think it's more unfamiliar now, but I sink in like dust resettling on a wooden floor, and I like that sensation. I looked through my baby pictures again, and laughed at the same ones I've always laughed at, and I was catapulted back in time. I walked in some orchards that were new and spooky and dark, the rain dripped off of old pears still hanging from branches and there were soft, rotten apples on the soggy ground. Orchards have tough skins, yet they invite everyone in to come and enjoy what they have; the morels that grow around old, dead stumps, the fruit blossoms, the fruit, the jittery robins, the caretakers of the trees, there's a lot to see and know. The weather was misty and cold, condensation curled around everything and it snowed one day, which was terrible. I went to Chicago to be with friends, we talked in dark art exhibits, and went to see new places. I came out of the two weeks feeling rested and springy, and back in Yellow Springs, those feelings are still here which is a good sign. My co-op quarter has started, but I'm not going to talk about it in this post because I just don't want to. Check out some photos that correlate with this post under the tab "Photographs" called "Home Buzz."
I got to Antioch on October 1, and it it was like I landed on the moon. Antioch College is nested in the wacky, but bustling town of Yellow Springs, which is a good place to begin with. Yellow Springs is tiny but has a vinyl store, a health food place that'll always save me when I'm in need of dark chocolate, multiple restaurants, two coffee shops, an art store, an indian food truck, an independent movie theater, some art galleries, a bookstore, a toy store, many boutique clothing shops, and other little buildings tucked into places I haven't explored yet. Antioch College is a mash up of abandoned buildings that look cool on the outside as well as the inside; it has two dorms called North Hall and Birch Hall (not abandoned), and the academic buildings--McGregor Hall, the Art Annex and the Science Building--are pretty much what make up the campus. There's more, like the Olive Ketering Library, the Wellness Center, and Sontag, but now I've just about listed everything. It's not the buildings that define Antioch College, though, it's us, the students, we bring the bustle to Antioch. That's why it felt like I'd landed on the moon, it was the people that were so unique and unfamiliar. It took a while to adjust to the social scene and learn how to interact with some, but now I feel like a full fledged Antiochian.
Below are some pictures that I have taken during my first quarter at Antioch. You talk. We draw. It's awesome. --Ink Factory Slogan This is about me and scribing, a type of visual facilitation also known as graphic recording. I have recently been introduced to a couple of places that use it, one called Ink Factory, the other called The Value Web. When I met the people behind Ink Factory, I scribed for the first time. Ink Factory is a graphics powerhouse, they wrap up people's words and and spit them out in the form of strong, hand drawn visuals. They use markers, dry erase boards, pencils, pens, and digital means to ink up their text and images. They break free of the bland and blah of business meetings and discussions. When doing commissions for companies their work brings a new light into marketing, one that catches eyes and enraptures. One of three things Ink factory does is called graphic recording, an art form I have recently become acquainted with as well as fallen in love with. Go to their website, you won't regret it. http://inkfactorystudio.com/#!/about-us/ink-factory-2/ My Dad walked into the kitchen as I was sitting at the table, all purposeful strides and impeccable posture, and asked me if I wanted to go to Boston with him. We tried this last year, and missed our flight to Boston because of a variety of misfortunes. My Dad is a member of a group called The Value Web. He simply says "I make people's jobs easier," which is true, and the easiest way to describe it. The type of work he does is organizational, but it's a free-flowing kind of organizational, one that relaxes instead of stresses. He takes businesses and puts them into an atmosphere that unravels the typical hierarchy that many companies are built on. Through creativity, time, and questioning, my dad and the others who do this work put businesses and companies in a collaborative, thinking-as-one attitude. He doesn't solve the companies' problems as a consulter would, but he takes away the barriers that inhibit an institutions' problems from being solved. In Boston, there was an event called the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference. Some members of The Value Web were there to work their magic on the third and final day of the event. Last year, if we hadn't missed our flight, I would've just been helping my dad out while he worked, but this year it was different. I would be participating, adding to the experience through scribing. The Value Web has their facilitators, which is what my dad does, and then they have their graphic facilitators, the people who I was associated with. This is what The Value Web says about their graphic facilitation: "Among our many tools for supporting group process and group learning, The Value Web employs a team of leading visual practitioners to visually record dialogue in a vibrant, information-rich mix of graphics and text to create a living context for conversation in real-time. More memorable than documentation, graphic facilitation helps create an engaging visual support to any gathering which reinforces key themes, connections and concepts to foster deeper dialogue and group creativity." I mean, I am no where near the "leading visual practitioners" status, but those are the people I participated with! I drew and felt my mind stretching in refreshing ways as I listened to the conversations floating around me, and it was thrilling as well as inspiring. The people there were brilliant and fascinating, all hard workers enjoying their work. Laughter was never far away. Also, I got to go to Harvard, which is a pretty captivating experience all in itself. |
she | her | hers
Ellie BurckI was born with a hole in my heart. The doctors scrambled to close it, but they probably didn't know that the hole was there to let in the good charms to feed my superpowers I was born with. They closed the hole quickly and wiped the sweat from their brows, but sadly I was left an ordinary human being with nothing much more to sport than opposable thumbs. I am forever trying to figure out how to jumpstart my sleeping superpowers, but in my downtime I am a cinematographer, film editor, writer, runner, musician, artist, and a 22 year old person that likes to hike on very hard trails that are way above her skill level. Categories
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