Previous Posts that I want to port over (and not forget)

March 10,2007
Making it work while finding some love

What a week. Omg, the preparation for the Mass Art interview is ridi-cu-lous! But worth it, hopefully. hahaha. At this point i am about three pics shy of feeling like the work I am showing is complete so I have four shoots lined up for this weekend. While gathering prints together I was disappointed many times because I have not been the best conservator (shh, don't tell anyone) and I don't want to walk into a photographer's photographer's school with booty looking prints. This means no dings, no bad edges, no dust (well maybe just a little in inconspicuous places). So yeah, it's been rough trying to figure out what I am going to show and what I have available.

In a moment of despair (because it seemed like i would never finish and the color correction was looking worse than I remember for the older prints) today while deinstalling some of the prints that are going up with me to Boston I remembered back to the Thayer Fellowship competition in 2003. Picture this: Senior undergrad year. Purchased tickets for a weeklong trip to Key West with five people from school at the start of the semester (nonrefundable ticket). One of whom I have a major crush on. Get a call four weeks before spring break. I had been selected as a finalist for the Thayer comp and if I wanted to compete I would have to present my work to the committee the Wednesday of Spring break. not so bad..out 200 bucks I didn't really have but that's okay. The crush is now a friend so ..yeah..that didn't go exactly as planned but it's cool.

So, I print my heart out for the next two weeks (all 30x40s, which means printing on the floor at Purchase. yes, imagine dodging and burning when the damn thing is on the floor. it was actually cool because printing became insanely more physical. oh yeah, try and handle that size paper (which is thin plastic) gently so it doesn't ding. First time in my life these monkey arms of mine didn't make me feel all self conscious). Anyway, finally finish printing and I ship my work to Boston to be mounted and to have a mammoth 48x60 printed because our lab didn't have a large enough processor at school.

Everything seems good, the 'rents come up to Ny with the van and we travel to Boston. Day one of Spring break. we get to Boston and the lab informs me that, "yeah, we couldn't make your print 48x60 because of an issue with the processor so we made a little bit smaller size print, sorry." It was like a 46x58 or something. Keep in mind frames have already arrived at school.

So we load everything and we return to Purchase. I am freaking out along the way but thinking..oh well, some sculptor kid will be around and can help me use the woodshop. yeah, right. I get back and am assembling frames with all going well. I repaint the entire room so that it is a beaming white and then I start the arduous task of putting together a frame from basically scratch. no pre-drilled holes. Should be easy for those who are even remotely mechanically inclined. Me, not so much. I was literally in the woodshop (having had no experience with any of these tools) crying because all I wanted to do was be in some hot nightclub in Key West or poolside. The campus was dead and here I was making it work or at least trying.

The fellowship interview went really well. I ended up receiving the Patricia K. Ross award which is given by the New York State Foundation for the Arts. The thayer fellow that year ended up being a Master's student in writing from upstate NY if I remember. He got a sweet prize. 7,000 bucks...I think I got 500 and it ended up buying my bus ticket to travel cross country for three weeks and a little extra to buy some film.

anyway, bo hoo..life goes on..you make it work. ..same today...pictures were replaced, problems solved and here I am at 1230 am feeling pretty good that I survived this test. Now, if my body would react to the good news that I am close to being done and wind down.

oh yeah, found some love today. A new review of my work. well mini review. This is from Terence Donovan's website. We found each other through Artist Space's artist registry. I really like the paintings he has created and he certainly has been recognized for them with awards. Check out a link to his site after the mini review.

In Jason Hanasik’s photographs there’s such a powerful connection happening with his subjects that the average, middle-class environment(s) pictured become insubstantial and arbitrary. Or maybe it’s that the intense connection with his friends and relatives comes from impermanence, things being taken away. His photographs are unsettling — maybe that’s just what the pursuit of happiness looks like. http://www.jasonhanasik.com

Update: I got into Mass Art, RISD, and CCA. The phone calls all came the same day. Talk about some universe synchronicity!

The perfect quote for right now

Edward Teller:
"When you get to the end of all the light you know and it's time to step into 
the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall 
happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be 
taught how to fly."


The Full Portfolio Weekly review

The Pursuit in Photographs
By Kristen De Deyn Kirk
Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006

A woman with a cane who appeared to be in her eighties entered The Pursuit of Happiness at Chesapeake’s Portlock Galleries at SoNo on a recent afternoon.

Slowing walking into the first of the two-room photography show, she looked at a picture of a young man in a sailor suit.

"Is this someone I’m supposed to know?," she asked her companion. "Who is this?"

The sailor’s first name appeared next to the photo, but that was all 24-year-old photographer Jason Hanasik provided.

More information, however, could be gleaned from his artist’s statement posted in the gallery’s main hallway:

"The images presented are not a road map to happiness but a meditation on the struggle to attain it. These are the moments in between where we rest. We take note of what is going on around us, the situations which have led up to this moment and identify the decision we must make to continue down our intended path."

In other words, Hanasik’s Pursuit of Happiness work is not about who his subjects are but how they are.

Hanasik’s family (mother, father, and sister) and friends pose for his photographs — and generously so. Hanasik does not capture beauty in a traditional way. Smiling faces, makeup, overt sexuality and movement — all of the elements the average person is accustomed to seeing in the average suburban-setting photograph — are rare in his images. His focus is instead on static poses, searching eyes, telling objects, lines and light. Ultimately, he captures individuals’ and couples’ loneliness, contemplation and life transitions.

The results can be uncomfortable for viewers at first because the images can take them back to their own near-hopeless moments in life. Dad in His Atlantic City Hotel Room 2002 shows Hanasik’s father sitting on the edge of a bed looking out a window. The light in front of him and behind him, beautiful streaks against the worn stripped bedspread, is not enough to motivate him to stand up. His bright yellow shirt suggests that he once felt some enthusiasm — maybe when he bought the shirt, maybe even that morning — but now he’s staying on the side of the bed, paralyzed by a memory or a present fear.

Kristen is in a similar state in a photograph on the same wall. Her hands clasped and her blue eyes sad, she hangs her hope around her neck and on a wall with crosses. A mirror reflects the cross on the wall, yet more obvious in the picture are three lights in the corner. Each points in a different direction, but at nothing specific.

Is this woman struggling with a matter of religion or a need for a new direction?

Nearby, James in Leonard and James connects with viewers as he sits and turns his head away from another man lying on a fluffy white bedspread suggesting purity and comfort. Two open doors framed in white are behind the men — one leading farther into the room’s bathroom and the other out into a hallway — but there’s no need to leave the room. The colors are gentle here, the lighting soft. James may have choices as represented by the doors; he may be different from Leonard, as seen in their poses and their skin tones; but here, on this bed with him, is a heavenly place to be.

In another photograph, Steve and Shelly’s angst contrasts with Leonard and James’ serenity. Steve stands under a glaring light inside a thickly textured building. He has chosen to be in a weathered, secluded place naturally enveloped in darkness. He may wish to be out of the spotlight, away from the fierce light that shows his wrinkles and reduces his eyes to half marbles of blue. Shelly, a dog, is outside — locked outside? — in the night with a street light and dried leaves on the ground. She wriggles her body wildly, possibly because an intruder is near, so much so that she’s out of focus. Leave us alone, Steve and Shelly could be saying. We have unique tactile beauty — creased skin, silky fur, crunchy foliage — that must be examined gently.

Too much light, too much attention, kills it.

Histories and futures can easily be invented when viewing Hanasik’s subjects, and it is cathartic to explore one’s own feelings as they emerge in response to the subjects’ imagined emotional state. For this reason, it is best to start a tour of the Pursuit of Happiness in the gallery’s second room (when entering from the parking lot). The first images in the first room — stunning and technically well-executed as all the photographs are — are immediately more obvious in their message. The first on the left is the sailor, who’s face is overpowered by the uniform (which is too often the case in life), and the first on the right is joyous with sunshine washing over a woman and two girls contently sitting on a couch.

Save that one as a reward, an uplifting burst of brilliance, for the end. •