Showing posts with label oil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oil. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
aCurator feature...
So pleased to be featured on aCurator this week! Julie was interested in a few of my projects and wanted to showcase a selection from each of them. It is rare to get the opportunity to share work from a variety of projects in the same venue! Please check it out and let me know what you think...
Thursday, June 17, 2010
from May 2007...
oil study from 05/07, sonja thomsen
I was curious - what does it look like? How does it smell? How different is my used motor oil from crude oil? How can I understand its economic and political implications?
Now that an unimaginable amount of this toxic fossil fuel is suspended in the gulf waters this inquisitive gesture has become my responsibility...
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Monday, September 08, 2008
what are they chanting?..."drill baby drill"
Two days after the term Drill Baby Drill was coined at the RNC by Republican Michael Steele. Two of my pieces considering oil were shown at the David Weinberg Gallery on September 5, 2008. I can't tell you how disturbed I was listening to all of those people chanting together on Wednesday night... frightening.
The exhibition could not be at a more opportune moment when we have Mrs. Palin a native of Alaska rejecting science and global warming issues. Her support of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is just the tip of the iceberg! (couldn't resist the pun, sorry)
In the exhibition "Who gets what: a political show" curated by the fabulous Aaron Ott at David Weinberg hangs two of my pieces: hole (fall, winter, spring, summer) and petroleum. I have been photographing constructed pools of oil for the past two years. By looking at oil and making it visible I am questioning its many implications.
The hole images are odd with the stark black hole, its presence and location unidentifiable. The images address the paradox of oil being "natural" and our obsession with it everything but. The inclusion of the seasons reference geologic time and the environmental consequences of our obsession.
The 9 panel grid of oil titled petroleum is seductive with the oily iridescence and high gloss images of this exorbitant and elusive natural resource. The sexy surface subverts our logical understanding about oil and politics being closely entwined.
I hope the intended irony is not lost on the collective... "drill baby drill"...really?!
The exhibition could not be at a more opportune moment when we have Mrs. Palin a native of Alaska rejecting science and global warming issues. Her support of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is just the tip of the iceberg! (couldn't resist the pun, sorry)
In the exhibition "Who gets what: a political show" curated by the fabulous Aaron Ott at David Weinberg hangs two of my pieces: hole (fall, winter, spring, summer) and petroleum. I have been photographing constructed pools of oil for the past two years. By looking at oil and making it visible I am questioning its many implications.
The hole images are odd with the stark black hole, its presence and location unidentifiable. The images address the paradox of oil being "natural" and our obsession with it everything but. The inclusion of the seasons reference geologic time and the environmental consequences of our obsession.
The 9 panel grid of oil titled petroleum is seductive with the oily iridescence and high gloss images of this exorbitant and elusive natural resource. The sexy surface subverts our logical understanding about oil and politics being closely entwined.
I hope the intended irony is not lost on the collective... "drill baby drill"...really?!
Sunday, July 13, 2008
books and Blurb...(2)
Second book...looking closely at the surface of oil.
small 7" sq soft cover, 20 pages
Recently diverse circumstances came together that made me curious about oil’s invisibility and ubiquitous influence in daily life. These circumstances climaxed in November of 2006 when a loved one returned home after his tour of duty in Iraq. I realized that obscure is my understanding of oil; it’s origins; its raw potential; its refinement; its economic, social and political relationships. What does oil look like?
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Monday, June 02, 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
acknowledged
Thanks to Jim Johnson - from (Notes on) Politics, Theory & Photography - for posting about my oil series, crude here
Sunday, January 27, 2008
new video piece...burning water
I was asked by the art critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to participate in a new project that would showcase artists in the region.
Mary Louise Schumacher asked four artists to create a 5min video about why and how they make their work. I was interested in using this opportunity to work with video footage I had collected of a lake in northern wisconsin and used motor oil in my backyard. I was pleased to collaborate with a talented sound and video artist, Jason Nanna.
It was a great experience and challenge to create a 5min piece in one month - in a medium I am not as familiar with. Jason taught me a lot about basic video and sound editing and I am really pleased with what we came up with. We approached the project as an opportunity to create a new piece of artwork that references my photographs and speaks to some of my influences.
The project - In the Making - was launched last week on the Journal Sentinel's website. Let me know what you think...
jason yi
katie e. martin
jill sebastian
sonja
What would happen if some of Milwaukee's best artists had five minutes to spend with you, the readers of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel?
Mary Louise Schumacher asked four artists to create a 5min video about why and how they make their work. I was interested in using this opportunity to work with video footage I had collected of a lake in northern wisconsin and used motor oil in my backyard. I was pleased to collaborate with a talented sound and video artist, Jason Nanna.
It was a great experience and challenge to create a 5min piece in one month - in a medium I am not as familiar with. Jason taught me a lot about basic video and sound editing and I am really pleased with what we came up with. We approached the project as an opportunity to create a new piece of artwork that references my photographs and speaks to some of my influences.
The project - In the Making - was launched last week on the Journal Sentinel's website. Let me know what you think...
jason yi
katie e. martin
jill sebastian
sonja
Monday, November 19, 2007
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Oil spills...
In San Francisco Bay
Eric Risberg / Associated Press
An oil slick spreads out along the San Francisco Bay. About 58,000 gallons of oil were spilled into the bay after the cargo ship Cosco Busan crashed into the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, leaving a gash nearly 100 feet long in the 926-foot vessel.
and the Black Sea. The oil spill in the Black Sea is called a "ecological disaster"
Thousands of birds have died. How can 1.3 million gallons of oil be control and contained?
Eric Risberg / Associated PressAn oil slick spreads out along the San Francisco Bay. About 58,000 gallons of oil were spilled into the bay after the cargo ship Cosco Busan crashed into the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, leaving a gash nearly 100 feet long in the 926-foot vessel.
and the Black Sea. The oil spill in the Black Sea is called a "ecological disaster"
Thousands of birds have died. How can 1.3 million gallons of oil be control and contained?
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Monday, October 01, 2007
Sunday, September 09, 2007
short but sweet...
It was a whirlwind trip to NY this weekend. Flew into the city on Saturday afternoon attend the opening at Silverstein and flew back to Mil-town Sunday. The opening was a great time. I am exhausted tonight... will share more about the trip soon but thought I would share some pics of the evening...
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Silverstein Photography Annual - this Saturday September 8, 6-8pm
I am excited to be heading out to NY for the opening of SPA at Silverstein Photography on Saturday night. The gallery just added more images of the show as well as the nomination letters from the curators view a list of them here
The following is Lisa Hostetler's statement about my work...
Lisa Hostetler for Sonja Thomsen
I discovered Sonja Thomsen’s work soon after my arrival in Milwaukee in 2005. At the time, she was in the midst of her Surface series, a group of images depicting the reflective surfaces of puddles and other mundane accumulations of liquid commonly found in and around urban terrain. Her attention to this humble subject, and the care and delicacy with which she rendered its appearance, gave me pause. Soon I realized that her photographs were not the formal abstractions that they at first appeared to be. Instead, they were about moments of heightened consciousness amid the flux of everyday life—as when you glimpse a reflection in a glass of water and are launched into a daydream.
Crude functions similarly, but it plunges even deeper into the matrix of thought and emotion that comprises contemporary American life. In the current political climate, oil is a complicated subject, evoking the energy crisis and the war in Iraq. For Thomsen, it is also personal: a cousin to whom she is close served as a marine in Iraq. Her oil photographs pique these associations, yet they are beautiful, with rich, creamy surfaces and subtle details that reward extended viewing. The series points to the ubiquity and influence of oil—that raw and mysterious substance on which third-world economies depend and first-world life runs—while reminding us of its virtual invisibility in daily life. How often do we see actual oil? Thomsen’s photographs invite us to stare at it and think about it. For me, the result is an uneasy conflation of personal and political blame, along with a slick reminder of how seductive it is to look without thinking. Crude doesn’t let me do that, and that is why I nominated Sonja Thomsen for this project.
Lisa Hostetler
Milwaukee Art Museum
The following is Lisa Hostetler's statement about my work...
Lisa Hostetler for Sonja Thomsen
I discovered Sonja Thomsen’s work soon after my arrival in Milwaukee in 2005. At the time, she was in the midst of her Surface series, a group of images depicting the reflective surfaces of puddles and other mundane accumulations of liquid commonly found in and around urban terrain. Her attention to this humble subject, and the care and delicacy with which she rendered its appearance, gave me pause. Soon I realized that her photographs were not the formal abstractions that they at first appeared to be. Instead, they were about moments of heightened consciousness amid the flux of everyday life—as when you glimpse a reflection in a glass of water and are launched into a daydream.
Crude functions similarly, but it plunges even deeper into the matrix of thought and emotion that comprises contemporary American life. In the current political climate, oil is a complicated subject, evoking the energy crisis and the war in Iraq. For Thomsen, it is also personal: a cousin to whom she is close served as a marine in Iraq. Her oil photographs pique these associations, yet they are beautiful, with rich, creamy surfaces and subtle details that reward extended viewing. The series points to the ubiquity and influence of oil—that raw and mysterious substance on which third-world economies depend and first-world life runs—while reminding us of its virtual invisibility in daily life. How often do we see actual oil? Thomsen’s photographs invite us to stare at it and think about it. For me, the result is an uneasy conflation of personal and political blame, along with a slick reminder of how seductive it is to look without thinking. Crude doesn’t let me do that, and that is why I nominated Sonja Thomsen for this project.
Lisa Hostetler
Milwaukee Art Museum
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