Artist Lecture

John Mann
John Mann was the artist I when to see speak on March 25. He graduated from University of New Mexico with an MFA in Photography. Now he lives in Florida, where he teaches and creates his art. He is a faculty member in the same school as Meg Mitchell, Florida State University.
His work is internationally exhibited it’s been in London, Portland, New York, Miami and also published in couple of magazines. In his “Folded in Place” photographic series we can see interesting methods he incorporated to describe the landscapes. Mann uses mapping, drawing and sculpture as well with photography to depict those landscapes. The images have abstract familiarity. All the images of places we have seen but he replaces the experience of being there with a photograph. The photo puts a distance from the actual experience.
In his other projects “The Cut Path” and “The Travelers” he followed the path of telephone lines moving into the landscape and hitchhikers. The telephone poles he photographed were the ones that were not mapped out. And in the case of the hitchhikers, Mann photographed the length of the trail they walked. This was not a documentary but a showing of the unmapped journey and distance they traveled.
Overall, all of his work was really interesting and he gives a different perspective of how we look at photographs. The way Mann shoots his images is very innovative and the photographs are aesthetically beautiful.

Artist Lectures

Meg Mitchell
Meg Mitchell is a former student of USF that graduated few years ago with a BFA in sculpture. Currently she is a faculty member at Florida State University where she teaches digital media.
She creates diverse work from performance pieces to video and mechanical installations. Her early work was collaboration with another artist. Together they crated alter egos called “Ian and Jan.” They used their bodies as creator of meaning, expressing how they felt about art and inserting themselves into art history. The performance piece was recreated in an installation where Meg Mitchell and her partner in this project used objects and videos from their performances. Another project of hers that I found to be very intriguing was the Base Pair Browser. She used programming to show the difference of avian genome data in different bird or animal species.
Meg Mitchell uses different systems of representation to express the image and the meaning. What I found most intriguing about her was her thirst to learn something new. Mitchell experiments a lot and that is what helps her create new art. She keeps on teaching herself new things and applying them in her work. The way she works is by combining different systems and materials into one piece. I’m glad I saw her lecture it was fun and I learned from it to be open minded and that everything can be used as art. Moreover, she coming to our class afterwards and giving us objective feedback was very helpful. It was motivating and valuable to see someone outside our class critic our work.

Definitions

Derive – a rapid passage through time in everyday life.

Situationist – group of people that believed that the external factors of their lives is more important than the internal motivations. The roots of the situationist ideas are in Marxism.

Flanuer – a person walking through the city in a way to experience it.

Guy Debord - a Marxist theorist, French, wrote Society of the Spectacle.

Detournement – a media work that changes the original media work to convey a new message.

The Spectacle – critical theory by Debord and the central notion of the Situationists. Something artificial that grabs your attention.

Theory of Derive

I wanted to depict everyday life as a cycle of events that keeps repeating itself.

Great Scene from Movie

Train of Thoughts

Diane Arbus

Fur

Cool shirt

Terry Richardson

McQueen

Lady Gaga