First Chicago Show

Oi Vey! exciting news! i have my very first show in Chicago coming up, June 10th. Ill be featuring work from my project An Excerpt of Various Photographs Strewn About the Room.



Caffe Baci
225 W. Wacker Dr
Chicago, Il

Opening Reception:
Friday, June 10th
6 pm-?

if you live in the area, are going to be around the area, or just want to come out to the area and say "hi," come on by!

ART MANIA!!

holy moly, it's been awhile! but ive been busy. yes yes....quite busy being lazy.

actually!... well yes, but winters thawed out and i think i am, too, finally. these past two weeks have been crazy packed, for a change. last weekend was the annual Art Chicago! the show was, as most art fairs are, a bit overwhelming in size and underwhelming in content (thanks to the myers school of art for conditioning me for art fair overloads, though!).however, it gave me the chance to find some local galleries, new artists. And some of my favorite fellow akronites were
part of the discussions series!

and then this weekend. well, ive come to two conclusions:
1)living in logan square is badass.
2)new cameras are badass...er.







yes! finally entered the digital age with my very own nikon d3100 (and a fuji x100 on its way. egadz!), and i was lucky enough in my timing to test it at the Logan Square Art Walk tonight (see (1)).

for those of you not from around here, Logan Square is an up and coming arts neighborhood in chicago with (as im finding) lots of artists, galleries, happenings, great food and awesome bars. i'm so glad im finally starting to get out and meet all these great people that are making the area what it is. Tonight's walk started at the (apparently temporary) I Am Logan Square Gallery, with "Point of View." This mother's day themed (well...female themed) show featured work by Katie Holland, Tracey Kostenbader and Julie Sulzen. here are some photos from the show.







next was another group show, "Somethin' from Nothin'" at Nothin' Less Cafe, featuring some music, live painting, some illustration and painting. again, i got to chat with the artists, use my new camera (have i mentioned how badass it is?) and check out a new place!



Jazmin Giron

Kyle Van Heck

i actually didnt catch the name if the guy painting, but i was very glad to meet the artists, Kyle Van Heck and Jazmin Giron.



last on the walk was one of my favorite new places, The Comfort Station.

this place is an old waiting station for train passengers from...1915(?) thats recently been revamped into an all around badass little cozy spot for all sorts of creativity. art shows, movie nights (im really really going to catch one of them, one of these days) and musical acts. i actually just missed fellow akronite Talons the other week, and was pretty bummed, but glad to finally check out the cozy comfort station. anyway, here are some images from by show, paintings by Aliza Morell


Jessie Devereaux and David Keel, curator and director, respectively



i couldnt resist taking this photo on the walk home for the formal similarities between it and one of Aliza Morell's paintings (above)



all in all, im really looking forward to this summer. way too much drama and bouncing from place to place last summer made me want to do nothing but hole up and fuck the world(can you do that?) but ooh man! this summer. new place, new people and such pretty new camera gear. i know my new babies will take care of me. photography has this way of always bringing me back from whatever dark little hole ive closed up in. gets me out of my head and (thank god) out of my room; all these little connections and overlooked relations, all these simple fleeting moments slipping through our fingers so simply, all frozen in a frame. all these clever little things that a photo does, as an object, as an image, as an icon, a reality. i long for a new project. something to keep me occupied, keep me moving, feeling, questioning and most importantly, looking.

OH! lets not forget about Milwaukee Ave. Arts Festival at the end of july. totally pumped to get in on that soon!

Happy Holidays!

May the Joy of the Season Be With You All Year

optical! digital! lets call the whole thing off!

whoa its been awhile. ill try to ignore that and update about life another time; i'd prefer to get this down now.

interesting lecture from justine kurland tonight at columbia college. one of the last questions she was asked was why she still shoots and prints optically these days. needless to say it sparked quite an intense and drunken discussion later in the night between friends. obviously, its a matter of preference, but in my opinion digital printing is the way to go. not just because its the wave of the future, but because digital printing has a wider gamut of color than optical, and our actual vision has a wider gamut than any man-made reproduction still has.

the question raised was, why does photography have to reference reality? obviously, the photograph is an art object and a new reality within itself. but still, photography inherently deals with reality. Even in the most modernist photograph, one thing relartes to another thing relates to another because, say, the statue in this photograph has some social connotation that we understand to relate to this couple in the photograph, and their style of dress ultimately speaks to the era of the photograph, which in turm speaks volumes about the context of the photo. what i'm trying to say that even in the most modernist tradition of photography (which i am entirely partial to and starstruck by), there is still a level of social understanding that glues the photo together. why is it do you think that douglas crimp wrote "the postmodern activity of photography." it beautiful really, photography inherently has modernist qualities and postmodern qualities all woven in almost seamlessly. this is why i'll always believe that photography is one of the smartest, most engaging and intriguing mediums of artistic expression to ever have existed.

Future life - real life RPG

RPG=LPG? let me explain. role playing games = life playing games. what? like, the Game of Life. remember that game? i wasnt very good at it. surprisingly, im not doing so hot at the game of real life. but what if this correlation were related? what if the two were one in the same? oi vey, let me explain:

so i've been watching this video.

Wii Games - E3 2010 - Guitar Hero 5

Professor Jesse Schell, at Carnegie Mellon (+10 points for CG in the grad school search) gave this talk about the future of gaming, and its integration into REAL LIFE. whoa what? yeah, remember when the wii came out and everyone was all like "wait, you have to move your body to play?!" (surprisingly nintendo didnt get sued for lack of accessibility options with the disabled. hoy!) and then wii fit was all "hey, let make exercising a GAME!" yeah man. it shouldnt be surprising then that things have been and are continuing to head this way.

as someone who is entirely interested in this technological revolution we're finding ourselves in, i've been extremely interested in integrating gaming and technology into real life. Professor Schell shows us a picture of a future where everything is is part of one big RPG. everything you do can be used for XP. provided you do things using the latest technology.

but that brings to mind another though: what about the analog? what if in this future, you were to do things the analog way. walk in the woods, no geo caching?! no +50 XP for expert position from your new Kama Sutra 3.0 e-book?! heh. well actually i think its interesting because earlier in his lecture, he tells us that this doorway into real life/gaming convergence is being made possible by our distance from the real, by our longing to get back to the real and authentic. these days we don't live in reality, well i mean authentic reality, right? its not subreality though. its more like baudrillard's hyperreality, isnt it? we can connect to a live event happening half way across the world, sitting in our chair, holding the screen in our hands.

freaky, right? so many things are synthetic, manufactured, replicas these days. its no wonder we're trying to "get back to nature" as it were. this and this is organic. this and this is made with an authentic recipe from italy, etc etc. So as Schell says, our urge to reconnect with reality and life opened this doorway for virtual reality to start crossing over into real reality? non-virtual reality? hows that for a brain-buster? non-virtual reality. if technology continues down the path that Schell painted, i wouldnt be surprised if the most accurate way to start describing some things IS non-virtual reality.

as with any technology, this can be used to enhance our lives, the quality of them, as Schell ends with, or it can be used to create a completely detached, de-humanized and dystopic future. it all depends on how we use it NOW. creation is so much easier than restructuring.

"Get Rich or Die Tryin’ turned into Got Rich and Stopped Tryin’ again. "

on the subject of an amazing post by friend, art/music enthusiast and badass designer Shanetron, ...well hell, i dont think i could say it much better, i guess you should just check it out. everything seems to borrow from each other in this day and age of the internet, and instant connectivity. hello, its the age of information, and we're overloaded

I'm proud to announce the opening of my Senior B.F.A. Show. apparently, this is the most important night of my undergraduate career! are you ready?! you're probably more ready than i am...

Tanner Young Says Goodbye to College Joys, a Senior Photography B.F.A. show by Tanner Young is a collection of photographs, new and old, from the ongoing project "An Excerpt of Various Photographs Strewn About the Room"

opening reception:

Saturday, April 3rd 5-10pm

Millworks Gallery

106 N. Main Street

Akron, OH

show runs through april 24th

hope to see you there!