I live in Asbury Park, New Jersey. I don’t know what it means. I just got here.

I moved to a shore town to be closer to work during the final crescendo of summer. On an evening walk last month I overheard a child complain to his mother that it was still too hot, even after sundown. She joked, “We’ll have to start vacationing in Alaska.”

I cannot imagine being a person who uses “vacation” as a verb, let alone doing that verb.

The summer I turned 17 I ran away from home to catch a punk festival in this town. I nearly got ripped off by a phony scalper before the show, who tried to get me to fork over $70 for a yellow bumper sticker. It was a special kind of ticket he said, a new promotion. I didn’t buy it. I know I looked young, but I didn’t want to look gullible. After the concert let out I waited at the train station among people getting progressively more stoned as they lay on the ground.

I was grounded for the rest of that summer.

Labor Day means so many things.

It’s much more complicated here. Beach tourism infuses cash into this area between Memorial Day and Labor Day, but that cash is brought in by tourists. There’s a mean acronym for northern folks who come here to clog the roads with their cars and the beaches with their bodies, umbrellas, voices, tanning oil and brassy accents: BENNY. It means people from Bayonne-Elizabeth-Newark-New York.

You can read BENNY GO HOME! on bumper stickers, t-shirts and fridge magnets. I’m already sick of hearing my neighbors complain about them. (Them? Me? Did I stop being a BENNY when I moved in August 1?)

Labor Day is supposed to be a holiday for laborers, after all. But since it’s the last hurrah for holiday-makers, it’s a big weekend for local employees to make money. Many restaurants or other food service joints tell job-seekers they are not allowed to take or request this weekend off. There’s no time for irony when all your cash-cows are about to leave till next summer.

Lately I’ve been intrigued by an odd bit of local history: the shipwreck of the Morro Castle in 1934. This luxury cruise liner was returning its revelers and honeymooners to New York after a stop in Cuba—before embargoes and travel restrictions. It was returning from an Orientalist fantasy of tropical paradise.

Cruise director Robert Smith had all the of promises of the cruise line’s brochure memorized, and he would welcome each new crop of passengers aboard by reciting these lines. Amazing revelation, tropical luxuriance, a world of flowers, unique hospitality – all phrases from the cruise ship’s promotional material.

The ship’s staff felt a lot of the same pains that contemporaries in Asbury voice today.

One passenger recalled an unpleasant experience in the ship’s dining room, “I asked for a couple of lamb chops. The waiter said they weren’t on the menu so they couldn’t be served. I reminded him this was first class. He shrugged as if he couldn’t have cared less. I insisted, so he went away and eventually returned with the chops. In one was a nail that had obviously been slipped in after the meat was cooked.”

I have worked in food service and am proud to say I have never messed with any customer’s food as revenge. I’ve also never had anyone badger me with, “This is first class.” I don’t imagine I’d react well in that case.

An awful night, the sinking. September 8, 1934, a fire broke out and ravaged the ship. At 3 a.m., passengers awoke to the smell of smoke but assumed it came from more drunken trash fires, set by the careless ashing of cigarettes into wastebaskets. The S.O.S. call was delayed by 45 minutes due to a chain-of-command misunderstanding and the crew, who had known for months that the lifeboats were decaying and largely ineffective, boggarted the effective survival tools and evacuated themselves first.

Why were the safety concerns, later described by the crew of the Morro Castle, not voiced during the August 1934 inspection of the ship? Two officers answered, “When making a living means not being difficult, then you are not difficult.”

How uncanny today to read the names of familiar towns as theaters of this tragedy. The S.O.S. came off the coast of Sea Grit. Some survivors paddled their way to Point Pleasant (often using corpses as buoys), walked off onto the beach, and told onlookers they had just escaped hell.

The next morning, beaches in places like Manasquan and Brielle drew so many rubber-neckers as debris washed ashore that vendors set up carts to sell them morning coffee and then hot dogs.

This was the end-of-season tourist boom after all.

Asbury Park city officials actually asked if the abandoned ship could be towed to its own shores and left as a tourist attraction. The death toll of this tragedy was 134 lives, the vast majority of them passengers. (Pleasure-seekers!)

The two ships attempting to tug the still smoldering wreck of the Morro Castle found themselves in their own comedy of errors. The ship doing the towing experienced engine failure and the venture was abandoned. The anchor was cut loose and the Morro Castle did indeed run aground on the beach at Asbury Park.

It landed only 300 feet away from a local radio station, which gave a blow-by-blow account of the wreck’s approach. This sparked even more curiosity and drew a larger crowd to gape. (And dine. And shop.) One resident has been recorded as remarking to Mayor Carl Bischoff, “This is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to us. They’re going to come from all over to see it.”

Tourists with disposable income: loved, hated, needed.

History isn’t the end-all-be-all of who we are. But I’ve been drawn, in part, to the Morro Castle’s presence in my new beachy hometown, and what it reveals about the culture of this place almost 100 years ago.

I have recently learned that here, September is nicknamed “Local Summer.” The days are still hot enough to walk the boardwalk or lay on the beach. Outdoor dining and concerts are still options. There will be fewer vacationers to fight for space with, is all.

This is my first Local Summer as a local, I suppose. I got here as the BENNIES go home. I can’t tell if I am one or if I am home.

Source for information on the sinking of the Morro Castle: “Shipwreck: The Strange Fate of the Morro Castle” by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts

Laura Eppinger is a Pushcart-nominated writer of fiction, poetry and essay. Her work has appeared at the Rumpus, the Toast, and elsewhere. She the blog editor here at Newfound Journal.

The post Labor Day in a Beach Town and What It Means appeared first on Newfound.

Tomorrow is a holiday. If you can, take a break.

I hope that you care for yourself today. You need your strength. I hope that you get involved in activism and advocacy. We need your voice. I hope that you prioritize your writing or other creative output in 2018. We need your work.

I hope that you take a breath. This post will likely take you less than five minutes to read. Breathing is encouraged while you scroll through it.

The rest of this space will be filled with photographs from various hiking trails in Arizona alongside facts about the peoples and ecosystems of this region. Please enjoy this, if you can spare the time:

In what became the Grand Canyon but was not yet the Grand Canyon 10,000 years ago, there lived a single species of squirrel. When the split in the earth became too deep and too wide for this animal to cross, two separate species started to evolve. Today there are North Rim and South Rim squirrels, with different colored fur and degrees of tail bushiness. This is called speciation.

We can date rock carvings, human artifacts or other desert phenomena because of a bacteria called desert varnish. To the human eye it looks like black paint dripping. It isn’t.

Desert varnish has been utilized by human populations to keep records, express the human experience, and track stargazing and other cosmological occurrences for thousands of years. Carve away the black minerals left behind by this bacteria’s life cycle to reveal a lighter surface underneath. The contrast between light and dark makes lettering or pictures possible. Communication and record-keeping are possible.

Rock carvings dated between 600 – 1400 B.C.E. at V Bar V were recently understood to, in part, contain a solar calendar. On the 21st of each month, a different carving is illuminated by a sun dagger. Other petroglyphs, created by Hopi ancestors, remain difficult to interpret.

Agave is the spiky desert plant native to the Americas; aloes are spiky, arid, African plants. They look alike but they evolved similarly yet separately. This is called convergent evolution.

Laura Eppinger graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA in 2008 with a degree in Journalism, and she’s been writing creatively ever since. She the blog editor here at Newfound Journal.

The post Desert Photographs and Facts appeared first on Newfound.

This week I found an antidote in photography-prose hybrid Blind Spot by Teju Cole (Random House, 2017).

A gorgeous collection of color photography and evocative text, Blind Spot shook me awake from dormancy. Each photo is titled with the location it was taken, featuring datelines like Venice, London, Lagos and Beirut. The accompanying text sometimes introduces the picture or refers to previous shots. Other times, the text muses on a philosophical idea, classical painting, or bit of music where the reader is left to connect the words to the image. (I was pleased to learn that Cole is a fan of both Bjork and Beck, among others.)

Try this: Take a long look at this picture. What catches your eye? What do you make of the clay-colored mound behind the red fence?

At first, I assumed the mound was rubble from a construction site. Something ugly and inconvenient, maybe a new structure being built or a current one undergoing maintenance. Then I read the text of “Piz Corvatsch,” revealing that the seeming pile of rocks is actually the highest peak of the Bernina Alps.

I gasped! How could I have breezed through the picture and interpreted it as mundane? My own assumptions served as a blind spot in this case.

After another look I delighted in the angle of the shot. Cole reminds us that in this perspective, a mound of snow takes up as much space in the photo as the mountain.

Here is one of the “Lagos” shots, which held my attention for hours.

There is a mirror here, but where? The edges are well-hidden. The corresponding text recounts the author’s childhood memory of being challenged to write so neatly in school notebooks that nothing would be crossed out or interrupted. I turned the phrase “smoothed out” over and over in my head as I went back to the photo, looking for a seam.

This is not to suggest that Blind Spot is simply a collection of brain teasers to incite the imagination. Cole takes on blindness and vulnerability, thus invisibility, in bold or jarring ways throughout the book. For one example, one of the longest bits of writing details the undocumented immigrant experience for Black Ethiopian women living and working in Beirut. The text suggests issues of dress, disguise, visibility and vulnerability are worth exploring here.

On another page, a picture of a curtain over a doorway in Berlin is juxtaposed with text describing prisoners in Guantanamo Bay: the pants rolled at the cuff, the hoods to blind the prisoners but also to keep them from looking guards in the eye. These are not easy images to confront, though they are necessary and demand witness.

Still, my favorite pieces challenged like riddles, such as the text accompanying a photo of a man atop a tree in “Baalbek”:

The first time our ancestors climbed a tall tree, or came in a migrating band to the edge of a cliff, they experienced vertigo. Only hundreds of thousands of years later did we experience jet lag… Finally we had figured how to move across time faster than time moves across us. In epiphany, you’re neither here nor there. In jet lag, you’re in duple meter, both here and there at the same time.

While I face down dark December days, I find it a comfort to puzzle over experiences of space and time. (Maybe that’s just me.) A further endorsement of Blind Spot: I read this work slowly over the course of one week, and throughout that time I had much more vivid dreams.

If you dream of mirrors, labyrinths and photographs that leap off the page, read Teju Cole and seek out your own blind spots.

Laura Eppinger graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA in 2008 with a degree in Journalism, and she’s been writing creatively ever since. She the blog editor here at Newfound Journal.

Cover photo: “Queens” by Teju Cole

The post Teju Cole challenges us to locate our own “Blind Spot” appeared first on Newfound.

It is also made up of objects. Artifacts. Things inside a home are there to make life work, as well as to remind us who we are and where we’ve been. I like going home. After being away, the stuff there evokes memories. If I’m home too long I take these things for granted. I can’t see them anymore. This is a photo essay to help me see again.

Laura Eppinger graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA in 2008 with a degree in Journalism, and she’s been writing creatively ever since. She the blog editor here at Newfound Journal.

The post Home: A Photo Essay appeared first on Newfound.

Johnson delivers lightly removed yet confident gestures, made by a sensitive and observant hand. This deliberate mark-making still contains poetry. In “Field Notes,” Johnson creates beautiful landscapes with her obsessively meditated drawing and in her most recent series, “Notes For An Emergency,” Johnson uses vintage ephemera and photography to collage work that expresses not only an analytical eye, but a deep empathy and exploration as well. Bethany Johnson talks with Newfound about the thought process behind her art practice, how she became an artist and what inspires her.

Courtney Simchak: There is a deliberate, qualitative element to all of your work—most recently the ink drawings from your series, “Field Notes.” Have you always been drawn to science and qualitative processes?

Bethany Johnson: Yes, absolutely. I’ve always been interested in learning about the world, and examining how we know things to begin with. Humphry Davy, an early 19th century chemist and inventor, is one of many to speak on the relationship between the arts and sciences. His words have stuck with me throughout the years:

“The genius of Newton, of Shakespeare, of Michel Angelo, and of Handel, are not very remote from each other. Imagination, as well as the reason, is necessary to perfection in the philosophic mind. A rapidity of combination, a power of perceiving analogies, and of comparing them by facts, is the creative source of discovery. Discrimination and delicacy of sensation, so important in physical research, are other words for taste; and love of nature is the same passion, as the love of the magnificent, the sublime, and the beautiful.”

Simchak: Do you design your methods of mark-making ahead of time or is it a series of slow but spontaneous experiments? Perhaps a combination of both?

Johnson: The “Field Notes” drawings are quite calculated. They are all rendered from one or multiple source images, so while these works entail small-scale decision-making as the images are translated into this new set of marks, the overall compositional decisions have been made in advance. This linear, methodical process references a scientific exactitude, while the hand-drawn process lends the works a more human, emotive, meditative quality.

My more recent collages (“Notes for An Emergency”), on the other hand, require much more spontaneity and active decision-making, as I am working to compose existing units of imagery and text into a composite image.

When I walk into the studio, the decision of what to work on is somewhat determined by whether I am more inclined toward the meditation of a pre-calculated drawing, or the mental exercise and visual puzzle of the collage process.

Simchak: How did you come to be an artist? Was it a decision or something inevitable?

Johnson: It was very much a decision. I had (and still have) many varying interests, which made choosing an academic and professional direction difficult. Interestingly, though, I think it is precisely this quandary that led me to art making as the best possible outcome. As an artist, I have the freedom to explore these interests in the most open-ended, interdisciplinary, and expansive way.

While I at first worried that becoming an artist “wasted” other academic inclinations of mine, I came to appreciate art-making as an intellectually stimulating and creatively satisfying way to holistically bring these interests together. I feel like I’ve gotten away with doing everything, in a way.

Simchak:  In “Notes for An Emergency” you take your qualitative mark-making and add the expressive influence of collage and hand-rendered images information. The result is still in the conversation with your more abstract work, but also seems more intimate in tone and meaning. There is a balance made between information and emotion—both a sense of order and a sense of disconnect. The information is there, but it’s jumbled, rearranged. Can you talk more about what started this series and what your thought process was while working on these pieces?

Johnson: The collages are relatively new for me, and emerged as a way to shake up my studio habits a bit. It was also inspired by the fact that, in the making of my work up until this point, I had gathered a great deal of interesting source materials and paper ephemera that reflect my visual and conceptual interests. It seemed about time that these materials themselves be explored as components of finished pieces.

One of the side effects of these materials sitting around for a various lengths of time is that a lot of the papers have yellowed to different degrees. The subtly varying whites, tans, and yellows of the papers offer formal color undulations, while also conceptually referencing the passage of time. The intimacy you are referencing may be due to the warmth of these papers, along with the glimpses of text that offer a little conceptual context.

Many of the collaged components contain images of nature, and of our human-made systems for measuring and understanding nature. There is a bit of melancholy and anxiety in these pieces too; a sense of a disappearance or burying, weather looming, horizons turned sideways.

I think these pieces more viscerally present some of my more personal fears about environmental degradation, fragmentation, and climate change. There’s an ominousness contained in the collaged phrase in one of the works: THE WAY WE LIVE NOW. I think in one way or another, we are all grappling with hope and anxiety, beauty and fear.

—-

Bethany Johnson received her MFA from the University of Texas, Austin, in 2011. She currently teaches at the University of Texas, Austin, in the Department of Art and Art history.

Courtney Simchak lives in Texas. She received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Texas State University in 2016. She has been the Visual Arts Editor for Newfound since 2014 and has an artistic background in drawing, printmaking and photography. Her work has shown in Austin and San Marcos.

The post Notes for An Emergency: A Conversation with Bethany Johnson appeared first on Newfound.

The series was inspired by a book discovered in a used bookstore, which generated a personal photographic inquiry into the world of UFO documentation. Her work is as serious as it is playful, found in both the lightheartedness of subject matter and in the thoughtfulness of her photo compositions. Marino’s work was recently featured in Newfound Journal’s Other Worlds Issue this spring, Art Palace in Houston and greyDUCK gallery in Austin. In Marino’s discussion with Newfound, she shares her work influences, how the series started, what she loves about photography and her standing on extraterrestrial life.

Courtney Simchak: What or who inspires and informs your work?

Rebecca Marino: A lot of books. I definitely consider myself a research-based artist and I do a lot of digging around before I start making things. The digging often starts in books– Mostly science fiction and science non-fiction books. I really enjoy Carl Sagan’s work and I’d say that he informs my work more than anyone.

Simchak: In your series, The Best Evidence Available, you mention that the project was inspired by a found document. Where and how did you come across this document and what was it, exactly?

Marino: I found the actual book “The Best Available Evidence” at a Half Price Books. It’s really old and worn and it felt a lot more like a lost archive or document than a run-of-the-mill paperback. It consists of witness accounts, photographs, diagrams, histories–all “evidence” that was essentially pulled together to prove the existence of unidentified flying objects (UFOs).

Simchak: Did your series turn out how you had planned or did it develop differently over time? How do you prepare to make work?

Marino: I usually prepare by doing a lot of research beforehand. For me, ideas usually come from information. There’s never really a set overall plan. I think that’s probably a really disappointing way to try and make work, because you never know what new ideas will spring out of others as you go. You have to leave room for growth and change or I would imagine you’d get really bored. Every series I’ve worked on develops differently over the course of time. Sometimes it even changes as I’m installing it in a space.

People are always trying to fill the void with something that’s bigger than themselves and the extent or potential for what that could be is really interesting to me. – Rebecca Marino

Simchak: There is a humor in your work as well as a serious inquiry into the parts and boundaries of belief systems. Can you talk more about that?

Marino: I think a good sense of humor is really important. Without it, I’m not sure how much interest I’d have in making art. Humor is also a nice access point for people, which I think has worked pretty well for me thus far.

But yes, I’m definitely asking some more serious questions too, specifically concerning belief in The Best Available Evidence. With that project, I think using the subject matter of UFO sightings is a somewhat comical way to bring people in, but then to ask these more reflective questions–what do you require to believe in something? Is this photograph believable? Or do you just want to believe? People are always trying to fill the void with something that’s bigger than themselves and the extent or potential for what that could be is really interesting to me.

Simchak: What is it that you love most about astronomy and physics?

Marino: Astronomy was a real game changer for me in my practice. I took an astronomy class in school and it started really changing the way I saw things. I’d see a dried up pond on the side of the road and think it was a crater. Everything just becomes bigger and more important and more amazing. It’s a child-like, almost naïve way of looking at the world, but it makes things as intriguing as they probably should be. I love astronomy (and science in general) for taking the very mundane aspects of everyday life and expanding upon them in a bigger cosmic perspective kind of way.

Simchak: Do you believe in extra-terrestrial life?

Marino: Oh most definitely. This conversation is always really funny to me. There are over 500 solar systems out there (that we know of) and still counting. It’s ridiculous to me that people would think there isn’t life out there.

Simchak: Why work in photography instead of another medium? How did you get started in photography?

Marino: I started getting into photography in high school. The honest truth is that we could take a course at an elective campus that focused on career training (including, but not limited to cosmetology, hotel management and culinary arts) and if you took a class there, you didn’t have to take gym. So I took commercial photography to get out of a gym class. Hilarious, but I totally fell in love with it and decided that was what I wanted to go to college for. I work primarily in photography because I enjoy it. However, a lot of my photographs are quite sculptural and as you can see The Best Available Evidence actually incorporates a lot of sculpture, installation, and even an audio piece.

Simchak: Due to the documentary nature of photography, many photographers use the medium to prove or attempt to prove science and folklore. Elsie Wright’s Cottingley Fairy photographs, which featured paper figures but were touted as proof of the existence of fairies, come to mind. Do you think, in an age of fake news and overly-doctored images, that we still are exploring the boundaries between reality and fantasy?

Marino: Photography is a really interesting medium because a lot of baggage comes with it. It’s used as a tool to document as well as a tool to create art, and that line between fine art photography and photojournalism is a precarious and blurry one. I like messing around with that line and playing with the connotations people have (or the side of the line they’re usually on) when they look at a photograph.

I think we’ve always been grappling with what’s real in a photograph. What’s pretty amusing to me are the vulnerabilities that photography inherently has (as opposed to overly doctored or Photoshopped photographs) which people often overlook. We’ve always been able to manipulate a photograph with things like exposure and framing. All photographs are constructions, really.

The fairy photographs crack me up–I’ve always loved that story and actually thought about it a lot when I made those UFO photos. I feel like this is where you really let go as the photographer. It’s way less about the person presenting the images (I mean, in the case of the fairies, it was children) and so much more about the people who are looking at them and judging what they are. It’s a way to measure the cynicism (or hope) people. That push and pull is fascinating. And yes, I think we’ll always be exploring that. Who wants to see the fairies and aliens? I mean, who doesn’t, really? But who can actually convince themselves something is there, right?

Rebecca Marino is an Austin-based visual artist whose work focuses on cosmic perspective. Her work has been featured in TX National, grayDUCK Gallery, Art Palace Gallery, and by the Humble Arts Foundation. She currently serves as the co-director and curator for Pump Project and is co-editor and co-founder of Conflict of Interest.

Courtney Simchak lives in Texas. She received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Texas State University in 2016. She has been the Visual Arts Editor for Newfound since 2014 and has an artistic background in drawing, printmaking and photography. Her work has shown in Austin and San Marcos.

The post The Best Available Evidence: A Conversation with Rebecca Marino appeared first on Newfound.

Each painting is a hand-printed photograph, screen printed with multiple layers of resin, ink and other materials, and then stretched around a round frame. These geographical studies take on an informative and thoughtful look into what marks we make as a species. In a recent discussion with Newfound, David shares his thoughts on his work, his artistic process and what influences him. You can see more of O’Brien’s work on his website.

Courtney Simchak: How did your Disc paintings get started? What was your inspiration for the series?

David O’Brien: The disc paintings began when I started getting serious about photographing the ground. They are a way to map and document the landscape from my own perspective. Each title is a set of GPS coordinates, accurate within a few feet of the photo.

If you look down at the ground in any given place, away from pavement, you’ll most likely find some mixture of grass, plants, earth and trash. No matter how far out in the woods you go you can still probably sift the dirt and find some bits of paper, or a little shred of plastic nearby. I’ve always been interested in watching buildings and machines decay and thinking about the lifespan of materials. Organic things regenerate so quickly and synthetic things often age incredibly slowly. So these little bits of trash are fascinating to me, just as much as the ruins of some great building. They are cultural and technological artifacts, markers that we’ve been here, destroyers at the chemical level.

Simchak: I feel like that is the danger in our capabilities as humans—the willingness to acknowledge the beauty of something, while also being able to recognize the power of its influence and, in this case, destruction: your work is beautiful, even with the message of sadness, astonishment. It has both the insight of poetry and the remoteness of observational notes. Would you consider these disc paintings as a series of rumination? Do you feel your work is as much scientific documentation as much as it is art?

O’Brien: Oh I don’t think that’s a danger at all. Being able to see both sides (or for that matter, many sides) of any human endeavor, in this case material waste and excess, is a positive thing. You have to strain to see all sides of an issue and spend time reflecting on them. Only then can you really act with intention.

You could call it a rumination or documentation, but I definitely would not call it science. It’s certainly guided by scientific though but the work itself isn’t a science project, it’s an art project. It asks different kinds of questions.

Simchak: You implement screen printing– a rather elaborate layering system of different mediums and inks– to print your photographs. How did this decision come about?

O’Brien: The process of getting photographs printed, mounted and framed was never fulfilling for me personally. It’s just too detached for me, too robotic, no offense to robots or print labs or photographers. I love photography but I wanted to find a way around it. I had gotten too deep into computers, I needed something hands-on, something where I could manipulate pigment directly, away from the filter of the computer, and yet still retain a connection to what’s essential about photography. Screen printing just fit. Of course I am still trying to find a way to make it my own, to take the medium in a different direction somehow. It’s a process.

Simchak: What do you find most satisfying and most frustrating about the screen printing process?

O’Brien: What is both frustrating and satisfying are the mistakes that can still happen, no matter how scientific the process. Serendipity is a big element in screen printing. There is always a moment of surprise when you lift a screen up. You never get two pieces exactly the same.
I’m also drawn to the fact that there is real physicality to the process. In the end you’re laying down acrylic paint on a wood panel. It takes some strength and focus to make each layer of a painting and I like that about it. The screens are big heavy objects that get thrown around, and the kind of pressure you apply when printing makes a real difference.

Simchak: I feel like your gravitation to the circular shape, versus the standard rectangular/square format amplifies that pull away from the daily digital influence of how we see images. The circle seems so anti-digital. So that kind of “worldly” shape combined with the tactile nature of ink and resin, really brings out the elemental aspects of your work. Your work in installation also seems to bring your work and experiences into a physical reality. Do you think this real-world element is why so many artists work in installation form, nowadays? Do you think you might work more with installations in the future?

O’Brien: Thank you. Yes and yes definitely.

Simchak: Time is very important to your work: the time the natural space takes to decompose (or not), the time it takes to photograph and the time it takes to impose the image onto the canvas during the printing process. Can you talk more about how this informs your work?

O’Brien: For me, nothing has ever come easy. I always feel like I have to work ten times harder and it’s still not enough. Probably for this reason I tend to appreciate work that is thoughtfully crafted, patient, and slow to unfold. I envy artists who can make things quickly and it works, I’ve just never been like that.

Time is invisible and unstoppable and it etches an impression on everything. For whatever reason I’m drawn to the impression time makes on materials, regardless of their origin, natural or otherwise. So I make paintings about everyday ruins. I study that process of decay and rebirth and attempt to gain some insight from it. Many of the places I’ve found are illegal dumping sites out in the desert, or houses left to cave in on themselves. Many are utterly unremarkable patches of land no one gives a thought to.

It’s possible that one day a landfill will be as valuable as a gold mine, if we ever learn how to harvest the embodied energy in all the things we’ve throw away. I feel there is some great opportunity there yet undiscovered. That’s what makes it poetic for me, matter is always changing in time and its value is always changing. Something new is always coming.

David O’Brien currently lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has had solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, Berlin, and Santa Fe, as well as numerous group shows. His current practice makes use of video, photography, painting, and printmaking. David travels extensively and primarily documents found natural phenomena in unexpected ways. His work questions traditional views of waste, nature, human intervention in the landscape, and the passage of time.

Courtney Simchak was born in Albuquerque, NM and raised in Central Texas. She received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Texas State University in 2016. She has been the Visual Arts Editor for Newfound since 2014 and has an artistic background in drawing, printmaking and photography. Her work has shown in Austin and San Marcos.

The post In The Garden of Externalities: A Conversation with David O’Brien appeared first on Newfound.

My curiosity prompted me to abandon all social media for the day and focus on the environment around me. I spent the rest of the day searching for inspiration, observing my surroundings with a purpose.

My day of searching externally for inspiration led me to finding it internally within my own curious thoughts. My curiosity led me to think about what kind of things inspire other people. So, I asked some friends and family to look for something throughout their day that inspires them and take a picture. Here’s what I learned:

One friend found inspiration from a quote written by a stranger.

Others felt it by a bubble blowing optimist on their college campus.

A couple sought inspiration in pictures that made them express gratitude for those who sacrificed for them.

While some saw inspiration in big city architecture that they hope to be a part of one day.

One was inspired by the beauty of movement.

Another felt it in something so simple as a Professor opening blinds on a window to let in light rather than flip on a light switch.

While a few were inspired by the complexity of nature.

Another felt inspired by the bravery of someone else.

While others felt it from their friends who cannot speak but always understand.

 Taeler Kallmerten, Staff Writer

The post Inspiration is Everywhere: A Photo Essay appeared first on Newfound.

Unfortunately, I live in a part of the world that gets a very real winter. Short days, snow, clouds covering the sun. Chafed ankles from snow boots. Chilled red ears from a biting wind.

This is the time of year when we make resolutions to do better, be better. I’m going to try to think better. I will try to enjoy being indoors more, and take more opportunities to create. Sitting at a table. Knitting by a fire.

Here are ways to praise indoor spaces:

 
Laura Eppinger graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA in 2008 with a degree in Journalism, and she’s been writing creatively ever since.

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Kuma Kitsune is a mixed-media artist and photographer living in Portland, OR. Her work incorporates a diversity of materials, such as fabric, projection film, tiny shreds of paper — and, in her most recent installment, other people’s poetry. More of her work can be seen here.

E. D. Watson: Your current work, A Walk Through the Looking Glass, is an assemblage of twenty-four individual pieces, titled with fragments of poetry produced by Hafiz, Ray Bradbury, Mary Oliver, Rimbaud and Lewis Carroll, which form a corresponding poem. Viewers are then invited to re-position the works and create their own poem from the new arrangement of the titles. Can you talk a little bit about how literature influences your work, and how you came to select these particular, seemingly disparate, writers?

Kuma Kitsune: I think what most influences my work is the Surrealistic concept of unleashing the unconscious. A huge component of what came out of that movement was literature. I mean technically, the poet Paul Breton fathered the notion of Surrealism — and in a mental ward at that, mind you. Breton had this idea that poetry in essence could be a vehicle of knowledge in of itself. And like many poets past and present, Breton was greatly influenced by Rimbaud.

So, there is the Rimbaud link. I felt it a travesty not to include him. Rimbaud shaping Breton, Breton shaping Surrealism, Surrealism shaping my work, my work attempting to shape how we perceive each other.  Since the piece itself is a play on the socio-psychological construct, the Looking Glass Self, I selected authors who have in part shaped the “self” to which I most relate in order to excavate self-knowledge in hopes that this part of myself may transcend the expression itself and the participant’s interaction to create a new reality of self-awareness.

EDW: How much is your work influenced by what you’re currently reading?

KK: A ton. Absolutely a ton. I read constantly and often many books simultaneously. I tend to gravitate towards non-fiction, mainly neuroscience and psychology more than anything else. There is so much inspiration embedded in something so seemingly technical. I too feel that plumbing the depths of the brain is a necessary exercise to cultivate true artistic expression or rather a way to exhume and free the spiritual self.

EDW: Do you also write?

KK: Somewhat. I dabble. I love poetry because in some ways it is akin to songwriting (my preferred method of writing).  Also, songs and poems can hold my attention much better than writing a short story or a novel. I have mad respect for those individuals who can preform this feat, such as Bradbury or Carroll. In my opinion, good poetry (and lyrics for that matter) can offer a unique temporal map to the spirit of the author. In these forms of expression, that raw power is harnessed by using form, which oddly frees it and keeps it uninhibited, which is what we see in Hafiz or Oliver.

EDW: I recently read an article by a poet and practitioner of Buddhism that suggested writing poetry as a way of being in the moment. The idea was that what we think of as mundane or sacred is only a matter of perception and engagement. Is this similar to your experience when taking a photograph?

KK: Can I get the name of this poet? But to answer your question, absolutely, yes, this is similar. Henri Cartier-Bresson said, “To take photographs means to recognize—simultaneously and within a fraction of a second—both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It’s putting one’s head, one’s eye and one’s heart on the same axis.”

I couldn’t agree with this statement more. I definitely feel that taking photos heightens my awareness of the present because it constantly keeps me open to the possibility of these fractional moments of beauty and meaning. Sometimes it can be downright compulsive, in that I’ll see something striking out of the corner of my eye and might make a decision to pass it by but a split-second later there is the internal nudge to turn around and capture it. I’m sure I have puzzled many passersby when I do this.  It’s not uncommon for me to make a U-ey and pull over to the side of the road to be present to moment — safely, of course.

EDW: The article was in an old issue of Shambhala Sun; I’ll see if I can find the writer’s name for you. One last question: You tend not to photograph people, but natural spaces or places recently vacated by people. Can you talk about the significance of place and space in your photography?

KK: I find environment a fascinating subject and medium. One of the founding
theories in the field of psychological epigenetics posits that our biological
composition does not hold us hostage or define us; it is malleable and shaped by
our interactions with our environment (physical, cultural, spiritual). In this way I
am very motivated to express various aspects of environment; I feel place and
space are fundamental to this pursuit.

As a visual artist, my hope hinges on the
possibility of change or shift in how the world around us is perceived. The importance lies in the subtext of these images; what is interpreted as negative
space is as equally important as what is interpreted as visible. I find this extremely similar to the way that what is often left unsaid in a poem or story is often more important than what is said. Our brains do so much to fill in the gaps and it’s in these gaps I personally see so much promise.

Kuma Kitsune’s work, A Walk Through the Looking Glass, can currently be seen at Portland’s Three Rivers Gallery.

E. D. Watson is Newfound’s Blog Editor. A writer by day and a library clerk by night, her stories have appeared in Bodega, [PANK], Narrative, and THIS., among other publications. She eats cheddar-and-mayonnaise sandwiches when no one is looking.

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