Square Foot 2012

After deciding early in the year I was not going to submit to any art shows I had a sudden change of heart back in June and decided to submit to the annual Square Foot exhibition put on by AWOL, but held at the TWIST Gallery. This was the second year in a row I submitted. I think it is a great show to not only submit to, but also to go and experience. It is a great venue full of natural light, and the show itself is lighthearted, fun, and of course visually stimulating. Each piece measures 12 inches square and they are all mounted like one giant quilt, or checkerboard if you will. It is a mixed media show and I would say the majority is painting, followed by photography, and even miniature performance pieces using projectors, and moving parts. Every single piece sells for 225.00 regardless of media.

Last year I entered three abstract pieces that were laser printed on metal, and was thrilled when on opening night one of them sold. This year I made the decision to enter pieces that in my mind would likely not sell, but perhaps just show off my work...expose myself so to speak. I recently did a series (which I hope to post some of them soon..) called Neon Self. In a nut shell it was re visiting some of my older work, but stripping the images of their natural colour, and adding neon colouring instead. It is a program that Picasa offers through their photo editing tools. The images were self portraits using long exposures which were from one of my favorite collections to date, and taken while I was still trying to figure out the new camera. (Nikon D60) Like last year, I also decided to produce these images on metal.

Due to other commitments we were unable to attend the opening night this year, but we did make it to the show a few days later. I was pleasantly surprised to see a little red dot beside one of them indicating that the piece had been bought. It is a piece that shows me looking out a window, my back towards the viewer. I had made the comment that I likely would not sell images that were of me, because in terms of being commercial which is where I thought my target market was, it would not fit the bill. Goes to show I have a lot to learn, and to stop trying to determine what will and will not sell.

These were the pieces I submitted, the top one being the one that sold. So now the question is...... what should I do for next year?

haunted self...

Again, not really a picture of Toronto but I wanted to share a new technique I discovered. I have been slowly trying to leave the automatic programs on my camera and venture into the manual settings that allow for more creativity. I have been playing around with shutter exposures. Both long ones, and short ones. There is alot of wonderful things you can do with exposures, for example you can create a sense of time, and movement. I'm still trying to work on this outside, but I am particularly proud of the self portrait I took indoors on a 30 second exposure....