LARRY BLACKWOOD
L A R R Y B L A C K W O O D
P H O T O G R A P H Y
NEWSLETTER
AUGUST 2009
IN THIS ISSUE:
I'm pleased to have lots to talk about in this newsletter as it means I must be making progress. It seems like I spend way too much time doing art shows, entering contests, sending out submissions to magazines, and putting together exhibition proposals for galleries and museums. It's a huge nonstop effort and there are constant reminders that it's a very competitive world--in other words the success rate for putting yourself out there in the art world is frustratingly low. And maybe it's just me but sometimes the rejections seem to hurt more than the acceptances feel good. (I know as an artist I'm not supposed to be concerned with pleasing anyone but myself. But after you please yourself isn't the next logical step to perform a reality check of sorts by seeing what other people say about your work?) So to a degree, tallying up the successes for these newsletters is a therapeutic exercise for me. By looking back over the last few months, it becomes more evident that I am indeed making progress, even though on any particular day it may seem like nothing is happening. So I thank my newsletter readers for indulging the chronicling of my achievements. But most of all thanks for your interest in my work and all the great feedback I get from my customers, POTD subscribers, and just plain friends.
In no particular order, below is what's been going on with my photography in the last few months. And be sure to check out my new internet store!
It's been an interesting summer for outdoor art shows for me for a number of reasons, with weather being top on the list. At my first show at the Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, MO there were tornado warnings every night. Fortunately none materialized, but I spent each night worrying about my booth at the show. We did get some wind the first night that collapsed one of the bigger tents on the site as well as heavy rains that turned the walkway between the main rows of booths into a quagmire. Kudos to the patrons who braved the Woodstock-like conditions to come out to the show anyway.
My next show was in downtown Tulsa, OK where again I lost sleep each night worrying about the tornado warnings. One night I had no sooner got back to my hotel about ten miles away from the show site when I turned on the TV news to see live footage of tents blowing down the street. I watched carefully as each tent went by, hoping to not recognize anything I owned. I did not go back to the site until the next morning, figuring my stuff was either safe or already gone. The 60mph winds destroyed a half a dozen tents on the block I was on and caused minor damage to others (including mine). In spite of all the worry, the Tulsa show turned out to be the best show for me for sales I have ever had.
After the exciting times in Missouri and Oklahoma, imagine my reaction to arriving at my third show of the season at Washburn University in Topeka, KS to find this sign posted on the lawn where the art show was to be held:
Again in Topeka there were storm warnings every night, but nothing major happened weather-wise the whole time I was there, just more nights of worry. You have to wonder about the soundness of the logic that concluded that outdoor art shows in the spring in tornado country was a good idea. There's a lot of valuable art at risk at every one of these shows.
Given my experience in the Midwest, I've been glad to confine myself to the more sedate weather of the Rocky Mountains for the remainder of my shows for the summer. The weather has been much more pleasant; the worst that was thrown at us was the 102 degree day in Coeur d'Alene. Sales have been down due to the recession, but at least we've had scenic, comfortable surroundings in which to sit and grouse about the economy.
As I write this, I have one more show to go, in Missoula, MT. Then I'll turn my energy to gallery and museum events (and hopefully some new portfolios) until next year.
During May and June, the
Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, OH held their 5th Annual Magnitude Seven juried art show. For this show, artists were to submit works no larger than seven inches in any dimension. According to the show description, "small works are intimate; inviting approach and inspection. Like short poetry, they are a challenge to craft with the same presence of their larger counterparts." When I read about this show, I immediately thought of my photo
126 Days 'til Summer. While this photo prints large well and has lots of impact at larger sizes, according to my wife it also has a curiously strong appeal when printed small (kind of like those Altoid mints). So I thought it was a natural to submit to the Magnitude Seven show. The jurors agreed, selecting it as one of the 50 works for the show from nearly 850 works submitted by 381 artists. I wish I could have made it to the show in Cincinnati as I was drawn to a number of works in the show catalog, particularly some of the small sculptures.
126 Days 'til Summer
American Falls, Idaho
2005
Center for Photographic Art 2009 Juried Exhibition
My photo
Fragments was selected for the Center for Photographic Art 2009 Juried Exhibition.
The Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, CA is a successor to the Friends of Photography founded by Ansel Adams and his colleagues in 1967. The succession of galleries located in the Sunset Cultural Center has a long history of supporting the art of photography and hosting exhibits from some of the biggest names in the field over the years. The juror for this show was photographer and renowned photography instructor Al Weber who selected 77 images from the 796 photographs submitted by 165 photographers. The exhibit runs September 19-December 4, 2009.
Fragments
Idaho Falls, Idaho
2006
Rocky Mountain Invitational
My ice abstract photograph titled
Nude Reclining will be part of the Rocky Mountain Invitational Exhibition at the
Nicolaysen Art Museum in Capser, WY. The exhibition features approximately 60 works, by 50 artists from across the region and runs September 1-12, 2009. I visited the Nicolaysen last summer. It is a very nice museum for a small Wyoming town with an emphasis on contemporary art. I'm looking forward to being a part of the exhibition there.
Nude Reclining
Bozeman, Montana
2005
The publishers of the photography magazine B&W have started a new sister publication called simply Color. (Gotta love the symmetry there.) Color follows the same general format as B&W with news features, articles covering the work of established, well-known photographers and also what they call Spotlight articles featuring the work of new or mid-career photographers. My own black and white work was featured in a B&W Spotlight in the October, 2007 issue. I was notified recently that I will also have a Spotlight article in Color sometime in 2010. Gotta love that symmetry as well. I'll post details in a future newsletter once the publication date is finalized.
Elevations Exhibition Update
Elevations, my exhibition comprised of 50 images exploring the sculptural qualities of grain elevators has moved from the
Wichita Art Museum in Wichita, KS to the
Center for Contemporary Arts in Abilene, TX where it is being exhibited through the month of September. A podcast of a gallery talk I gave on June 13 in conjunction with the exhibit at the Wichita Art Museum is available
here. I will be attending a reception for the exhibit at the Center for Contemporary Arts on September 18. (Images from Elevations were featured in Lenswork and Lenswork Extended Issue #75.)
Elevations #50
Bozeman, Montana
2003
On June 26th, I attended the opening reception for the
Montana Triennial (which includes two of the photographs from my
Ghost and Empties collection) at the Missoula Art Museum in Missoula, MT. I enjoyed the opportunity to view the exhibit and talk with the juror, Beth Sellars, as well as a number of the other Montana artists with works on display. There's some really innovative art being produced in Montana--it's not all paintings of tipis and buffalo out here! (Don't get me wrong, I love western art, I really do. But at times art galleries in this part of the country focus so narrowly on that genre it's sometimes hard to remember there's anything else out there.)
The Montana Triennial exhibit runs through September 24.
The Value of Online Photography Contests
There are a number of prestigious looking on-line photography contests out there. I've entered my share of them over the last few years and got at least nominations in a few, including the Black and White Spider Awards and the Sony World Photography Awards. Entering these competitions is a good way to see how your work stacks up against others. But you have to keep in mind that just because you win something, it doesn't necessarily mean your work is great any more than it means it is bad if you don't win. Your work might be good or bad; the contest just tells you how you stack up against a particular set of judges aesthetic criteria.
Feedback by way of contest results may of course be important if you are trying to market yourself or promote your work. There is always the hope that by winning one of these contests you will be discovered by important people and your career will take off. In my experience, that just doesn't happen. Putting these contest results on your resume (or in a newsletter!) helps you look good when you are promoting yourself, but the contest results don't lead effortlessly to fame and fortune. There are just too many of them and I don't know if they are even followed by that many "important" people.
A case in point is the 2008
Px3 Prix de la Photographie Paris competition which I entered and then forgot about. Apparently everyone else forgot about that contest too, as not until recently did I find out almost by accident that I had won a 2nd place award and an honorable mention over a year ago. I don't remember ever getting so much as an email telling me what I had won. Perhaps one was sent and it went directly to my spam mailbox or something. But more importantly, in all the publicity that this contest puts out, and in spite of the fact that Camera Arts Magazine calls Px3 " Europe's biggest and most prestigious photographic competition," nowhere did it come back to me that I had won. Not one person ever mentioned it to me and I didn't see it announced anywhere in a magazine or on a website. I actually found out when I googled myself one day and their web page came up. So much for a boost to the ole career from that adventure.
As they say, you can't win if you don't play, but when it comes to paying good money to enter these contests in the hopes of getting a good payback from the investment, it's definitely caveat emptor.
(In case you are wondering, the honorable mention was for my photograph
126 Days 'til Summer, shown earlier. The 2nd place award was a public choice award in the nudes category for my image
Eve's Reach which was featured in my
February newsletter. I didn't tell them that the picture was of a nude tree, not a nude person. I wonder if that would have mattered. )
New Internet Store for Purchasing Prints
I have finally put the finishing touches on a more formal means of ordering prints of my photographs over the internet. You no longer have to send me an email to inquire about prints, arrange for payment etc. It can all be done on my web site now, including safe payments using your credit card or PayPal account. Take a look at the store
here. Be sure and scroll down to see the new mini photo portfolios presentation tin boxes that I am offering for my
Bare Trees visual short stories as well as a sampler of my more popular images.
Sample Bare Trees portfolio photo tin
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