Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Fun-A-Day 2013: Opening this week!


If any of you are in the Chicago area you should come by the opening for the Fun-A-Day Exhibition! This Friday night @ the Threadless store!

Participants in Fun-A-Day do one thing everyday for the month of January. Lots of people make stuff but I've seen others do a specific action or go to a specific place: as long as you can document what it is you choose to do. At the end of the month, a show is organized and everyone who wants to show their work is invited to.

This year I'll be showing all of my sky swatch photos from the month of January. My awesome roommate made tiny wood sculptures every day and she'll be showing those, too.
The show will be up for an entire month... but who doesn't love an opening party! Come by and say hello if you can!

Sunday, February 3, 2013

January Field Notebook


January:

I can already feel my relationship with the sky changing. But that was immediate- maybe not even a change but a a sudden epiphany that started all of this. More surprising, perhaps, is the way I've changed my habits to better serve the project. I began to notice early on how frequently I find myself in the same locations. I now try to find new spots, new views. Some require me to drive miles outside my beaten path; others are only paces from previous shots. I've seen more things from familiar spaces in the last month than cumulatively in the last two years.

As much as "color" and "sky" have been my companions in this endeavor, I find myself more and more aware of my relationship to light. I need enough light to accurately read the swatch. Too much diffused light and the swatch reads too dark. The angle of the sun is important, too. If I try to swatch too early or too late, the slant of the light renders it too yellow, affecting the swatch and preventing a good reading. I do battle with these limitations. I try to cheat my way around them, although it doesn't feel like cheating: we interact with the sky at all times, with all variations, not just during optimal daylight hours.

I wouldn't say I've gotten bored of solid blue sky, (there's something too overwhelmingly gorgeous about the dome of color that surrounds us to ever be "over it,") but as the project continues, I find myself yearning for challenges. Can you swatch at night? What about the colors at sunrise/sunset? The sky is so much more than "blue."

I'm going to need more swatches.

*****

Looking Ahead

 February's challenge is The Night Sky.