Hudson River Watch, New York, NY, 2006 by Robert Vizzini

What can I say, I miss New York and can’t wait to get back…

Born and bred New Yorker and aspiting Hot Shot Robert Vizzini on his submission:

New York has always been a place of change, and lately it seems to be increasingly and rapidly shifting, reshaping, and vanishing. Along with this, I personally have experienced the feeling that time is precious. Beginning about two and a half years ago, all the incidental work of doing photography weighed on me to the point where I stopped taking photographs. What I found, though, was that the images of New York continued to impress themselves on my imagination. I recently decided I had to get back to capturing them again on film.

For a long time, I have wanted to do a large-scale project on New York, my hometown. I have a sense of urgency, though, both with my feelings of getting older and with the rapidity of the changes in the city. Lately, I have been photographing feverishly, night after night, finding new aspects of the landscape to capture at every turn.

Less than one week remains to get your entries in!
How about today?

Blue Moon Diner by Shane Lavalette

I cannot recall each of the exact places where I have run into Hot Shot hopeful Shane Lavalette around the web, so let’s just say he gets around. At the ripe age of 19, he not only has a great name and considerable google results, but an impressively cohesive body of work which you can see on his website or on his flickr page. On his submission:

These images are a small selection from a larger on-going body of work currently titled Je Reviens (meaning “I Return” as well as “I Haunt”). The project, stemming from personal experience, explores my own attempt to find home, relationships with the landscape as well as domestic space, and a continued search for this sense of comfort, where worldly cares fade and the people and places that one loves become the focus.

Keep it up Shane. Everyone else, the clock ticks…

Enter

The Last Splash Made It by Mandy Sue Springer

One of my favorite parts of looking through the submissions is the variety in not just the work, but in the way artists choose to represent themselves through words. The statement can easily become the bane of any artist’s existence, a frustrating yet necessary addition to the process. Sometimes they’re in first person, sometimes third, short and sweet versus long and sprawling, a heavy handed academic tone or an informal blurb––each submission comes with a surprise. Luckily, there is not a mandatory method for writing about one’s work or oneself––it’s secondary support and only you can gauge how much is necessary. You know why you make the work you do, but oh how tricky it can be to convince others.

I give you words from aspiring Hot Shot Mandy Sue Springer:

I am from Kentucky. I like overalls and sometimes I don’t wear shoes, but I wear makeup and love lace. I have dirt under my fingernails most of the time and I get pedicures. I stay up too late and don’t have enough time to take naps. I love the beach and the mountains more. My favorite color is green and trees follow everywhere my art goes. I wonder when I will quit wondering what I will do when I grow up. After receiving a bachelors degree in studio art I realized that I didn’t know enough and now I am finding out more at Savannah College of Art and Design. I am best at worrying, but tell others that worrying is useless because it doesn’t solve problems. My mom always said I talk too much, but strangers say not enough. And pictures allow me to tell the stories that only I see.

You have a mere week to get your entries in. Surprise us, enter today!

Elk, CA by aspiring Hot Shot John Saponara

The Hey, Hot Shot! entry of the day: John Saponara.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF STRANGERS: I initially began making photographs of tourists photographing themselves in various places as a reaction to them. I wanted these people to be prescient and in the moment, rather than worrying about showing granny and Uncle Bob that they were in Yellowstone. I strove to create a quiet photograph no matter the chaos that surrounded them or me. With time, these images become less about the places in them, but rather a faded memory associated with being there, somewhat recognizable, but belonging to someone else. The places here have become a stage set, separated from reality: they exist only in the world that my photographs have created for them.

Enter today!

Red Popsicle by Robert Thurlow

Something warm and sunny for a cold winter day, I give you aspiring Hot Shot Robert Thurlow.

My photographs express feelings of humor and alienation. My autobiographically themed work uses repetition and narrative to enhance and challenge notions of pop culture and the banality of the everyday and the self.

Yes, the weather might have frozen us out of the gallery, but it is a prime day to submit your work––enter online!

A brief administrative announcement: Cold snap + Heat problem = Uninhabitable gallery!

NYC weather is cold with temps only in the teens for the day and the heating system’s gone kaput. Rather than become human icicles, we’re closed for the day. We’ll resume regular hours tomorrow (Saturday): Noon - 6pm. Please come see us then!

Til then, spend time with the jb virtually:

Read up on all the Hot Shots

Check out jen bekman artists

Visit Jen’s blog, Personism

The Sweater Incident, 1999 by aspiring Hot Shot Jill Frank

Jill Frank’s Hey, Hot Shot! submission comes from a series of reenactments of fleeting incidents from her childhood. In caricatures of herself and family, or maybe even me and you, she does a decent job at summing up that feeling of painful reminiscence that we all seem to enjoy so much. Regardless of the nostalgic humiliation, her work is humorous and dare I say poetic––she puts it well. As does her accompanying project illustrating her childhood memories of others which you can see on her website here. Now I suppose I’ll pass the mic to her…

My return home, after years of living on my own opened a flood of ideas about the idea of family, the absurdity that we experience when we are close to people, and my own memories of childhood that were almost forgotten. My goal became to record the moments that I felt had shaped my family history.

Jill too left New York and is now in Chicago at The School of the Art Institute, meaning neither of us were in attendance at last night’s soiree. But thanks to all who went and helped make it the eventful evening that I hear it was!

Next time, be the guest of honor. Enter today!

From Joseph O. Holmes Workspace series

Tonight jen bekman presents the second annual Hey, Hot Shot! ne plus ultra, also known as the HHS! 2006 Annual, the crème de la crème of Hot Shots. That’s four fantastic artists in one show! We’ve got Ian Baguskas, Kate Bingaman-Burt, Alison Grippo, and Joseph O. Holmes—yes, that is quite hot. And the kicker… It’s the top of the hill for the jb—the 40th exhibition!

Come and help us celebrate the big day.

Hey, Hot Shot! ne plus ultra
(2006 Annual)

Ian Baguskas | Kate Bingaman-Burt | Alison Grippo | Joseph O. Holmes

Opening Reception: Wednesday January 24 | 6pm - 8pm
Exhibition Dates: January 24 - March 3, 2007

jen bekman
6 Spring St (between Elizabeth + Bowery)
NYC 10012 | +1.212.219.0166

Untitled (two people under a large tree) by aspiring Hot Shot Grady O’Connor

Perhaps you recall Grady O’Connor’s work from the last round of Hey, Hot Shot! submissions. Today I unknowingly selected his work once again, only upon googling his name did I discover our paths had crossed before. And what a pleasant surprise it was! While still interested in pursuing the simplicity in life, Grady has been working on a new body of work which you can see on his flickr page here. On his submission:

Over the past few months I have been creating a body of work that is representational of my current views of the world around me. I live a life split between my apartment in the East Village, my parent’s house in the suburbs, and endless points along the way. While I have always had strong ties to home, travel has always been an important factor in my life. As contrived as it is, my travels truly are about the journey; gas stations, parking lots, roadside diners. I carry my camera with me to make documents of these places in the most literal sense. I find joy in the simple things, and have taken these photographs to reflect upon that.

Good work Grady! Everyone else, less than two weeks remain––get ‘em in! Enter online today. And while you’re at it, join us tonight for the Hey, Hot Shot! Annual and let the hottest of the Hot Shots from 2006 get you in the mood.

Untitled 2 by Mark Diehl

Aspiring Hot Shot Mark Diehl submitted work from his Dream Series. Well executed and, more importantly, well edited night photography summing up the work, I must give him credit for his take on the process. He says, “I attempted, constantly, to grasp why I was so enthralled with sacrificing rest for photographing silently at the hours when so few are awake.” Shooting in his hometown, he revisits his past haunts, the places he knew only as a child, taking the project beyond eerie light and long exposures into a personal jaunt with nostalgia.

To photograph at night, to suffice for sleep, is to equate this process to dreaming. Fittingly and surprisingly, I found myself with physical records of places I dreamt of wandering in night as a youngster. These photographs are a document of discovery for myself, both as the artist and what it meant as a child to transverse into the dreaming landscape.

You have two weeks to get your entries in. Why not enter today?