STAY(2007) by HS Hopeful Mollie Murphy

Attempts at honing my lady-like habits continue and after a late night turned into early morning trying to teach myself to sew, I feel like I know aspiring Hot Shot Mollie Murphy rather well. Usually wary of those who use other’s words within their own, after reading Mollie’s strange statement and watching some of her even stranger videos I can see Ms. Murphy’s personality permeating her work in ways the average submitter’s does not.

I always thought that I couldn’t be a photographer because I was a sculptor or a whatever I needed to be to say the things I needed to say-er. So about my sort of non-photography: it’s a form of collecting for me…and a way of framing the world and saying, “Look at this (wonderful, weird, sad, uncanny, lovely) thing I saw.” It’s always about saying, “Look”. All the work is about that and sharing, which is a form of show and tell: picking up the thing/making the thing and cupping it in one’s hands to show anyone who even is just passing by.

…still today I am only counting on what becomes of my own openness, my eagerness to wander in search of everything, which, I am confident, keeps me in mysterious communication with other open beings…I would like my life to leave after it no other murmur than that of a watchman’s song…Independent of what happens or does not happen, the wait itself is magnificent.
– Andre Breton, Mad Love

And her bio:

Grew up outside of Washington, DC: Watergate era, State Dept. brat (so lived in Germany, Africa)…hence, the political apathy. I took a long time to figure it out (BA in English, two kids) but now have a MFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University. I’m 46 and an artist (sculpture, photography, video), a parent, a high school teacher (Princeton High School) where I actively work towards a total re-do of my own disastrous high school experiences. I have a youtube site (search: mofilms27) and can be found, posting like a maniac at flickr.com as well, under flickr.com/photos/molliemurphy/.

All things next to eachother constitute the universe.
– Jorge Luis Borges

So go check out Mollie’s work and, of course, enter soon there after.

Soap by aspiring HS Maria Efimova

Fresh from the entry pool, today’s Hot Shot hopeful has found a fan in me. Maria Efimova’s work is clean, crisp, a little creepy, and, of course, gooood looking. Her images pinch my not too infrequent desires for domesticity. They smell of lysol rather than febreze. These lifeless spaces scream all kinds of reprimands right at my lifestyle. They remind me of my grandmothers and the South, of the thought - your home is your calling card.

In Maria’s words…

For the past few months I have been taking pictures indoors, in my rooms or rooms that belong to other people, in rooms that have changed hands or no longer belong to anyone. I am interested in looking at these spaces because looking seems to me to be a way of organizing, understanding, and integrating (or not) what is around us in the world.

She goes on to quote Alex Katz’s words on art as a way of “working with what you don’t understand, not what you think you understand all too well.â€?

Her simple site [which you should go see this very second] features many an amazing image, I selected Soap not only because I think it’s beautiful and all that, but also because a) I just spent the past half hour in Duane Reade trying to decide which soap would be the kindest to my skin and b) I mistook the top piece of soap for a slice of lemon and I am dying for a glass of such.

Her site also includes images of recent paintings. Take a moment to enjoy this pair - Norfolk and Yellow Walls. Then for a little somewhat relevant fun, go read this classic. And to top the afternoon off, enter the Fall 2007 Edition of Hey, Hot Shot! before you realize that it’s too late.

Monster 3 by Fall ‘07 contender Damian van Camp

I love this photograph. I tried to look at it for awhile without reading the artist’s statement because I had to decide for myself whether this creature was real or not. Now, I feel pretty dumb. Because it is real. Right?

I have been scared of the sea since as long as I can remember. I swore off eating seafood for my entire life until just about 4 or 5 months ago, when I decided that if I wanted to be a true foodie I had to foray into eating under the sea. But, I still get scared of swimming in the ocean (which I also swore off for a certain amount of years in my life–the feeling of slimy little scaly things rubbing up against my legs really irked me) and I despise people who keep fish for pets. I’ve attributed my deep fear for all things ocean to a few basic factors in my life: firstly, my name is Marina, which means “of the sea” (hmm…weird, right?), and secondly, I am a Virgo, which is represented in many cultures through the image of a mermaid (double weird!).

I was about to go into deep, Freudian-like, silly analysis right there, but I decided against it.

Anyway, it’s not so surprising, then, that I am fascinated by young photographer Damian van Camp’s series of photographs entitled “Sea Monsters”. Although van Camp (or do I say Camp? van Camp vs. Camp?) is not as afraid of the sea as I am, or at least he doesnt attribute the series to coming out of that place of sea-fear, he does recognize that fear played a part in this work:

My hunt for the most general definition of fear led me to “The Unknown� – the idea that people fear what they don’t know. Further study led me to the conclusion that it isn’t “The Unknown� that’s fearful, but is instead what our imaginations project onto what we don’t know that makes us afraid. Inspired by sea-demons of folklore and the mutant demons of late 15th/early 16th century Dutch painter, Hieronymus Bosch, this series, currently comprised of eight 32�x40� digital C-prints of Frankenstein-esque sea creatures made from the real parts of actual sea life, is intended to showcase human fear. Based on the notion that Fear is the irrational product of a run-away imagination, the series attempts to uncloak and conquer the emotion by transforming sea monsters into whimsical, archetypal visual icons that symbolize, rather than create fear.

Oh, so I guess they’re not real. Well, I guess that’s a relief. I doubt I’d want to go into the ocean again if I actually believed that thing could be swimming somewhere underneath me.

As for van Camp, he is a recent graduate of RISD and he has a well-worded artistic philosophy, that I will share with you below:

Having grown up in New York – a cultural and commercial center of the world, I gain most of my aesthetic sense from my absorption of consumer culture and marketing. My awareness of slick, color-saturated advertising and the power of visual persuasion (both in the public world as well as the Art World itself) has been a huge influence, manifesting itself as a kind of attack plan when organizing new works. Similar to the behavior of logos and the process of branding, the distillation of larger ideas down to archetypal, iconic symbols, often including the appropriation and re-contextualization of easily recognizable, pre-established visual languages within the greater public consciousness, plays an integral roll in my image-making process. My conceptual approach is closer to that of an analytical essayist, using my final “symbols� as stand-ins for what would otherwise be written conclusions or summations.

The ultimate goal of my work, usually dealing with (though not limited to) such major themes as nature, religion (often Judeo-Christian tradition as philosophy or social science), and the primal, more animalistic side of the Human Being, is Socratic and educational – to allow people to ponder, to inspire people to question, and to demystify those parts of our past and ourselves that time and history tend to convolute.

Keep up the good work, Damian!

As for the rest of y’all, did you know it was time for you to enter your photographs into this round of Hey, Hot Shot!? You better do it soon, or I’ll send one of those ugly sea monsters after you. Ha ha ha ha!

Clouds by Elizabeth Fleming

For that bad case of the Mondays you’ve been battling all day, I give you Hot Shot hopeful Elizabeth Fleming.

My latest two bodies of work “Life is a series of small momentsâ€? and “Visitingâ€? are about the still image taking on an air of cinematic allegory under potentially mundane circumstances, be it taking care of my two daughters at home or venturing out to a museum or theme park. Photography to me is the definition of flow: as I look through my viewfinder I try to find those synchronistic moments, that pure excitement of discovery. I see the world in details, and I’m grateful. For me, the quotidian has been elevated to a thing of wonder.

Keep it up Elizabeth! Everyone else, enter tonight!

“Kay” from Rachael Dunville’s Springtown

If you’re in New York and haven’t yet made your way to Peer Gallery to see Summer HHS! Winner Rachael Dunville’s solo-show Springtown, you need to A-S-A-P. Up since mid-September [and closing 10/20] the show has gotten oodles of press and praise. In the current edition of The New Yorker, you can find Vince Aletti’s write up on the show. Very cool. And maybe you noticed that the New York Post’s Page Six Magazine dubbed the show “enchanting.” Very true. And then there are the props from all across this wide blogosphere - Rachael is getting her dose of well earned love.

In Toronto? Check out Rachael’s work in the Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward at Lennox Contemporary up through 10/21 - details here. Hot Shot Alums Andrea Chu and Shen Wei are also in the show which heads to New York in November.

And wait, there is more, much more.

Wednesday evening Rachael will join her fine work at Peer for a discussion on the show. What better way to spend your Wednesday night than with Rachael? RSVP now.

October 17th, 6:30pm
Peer Gallery - 526 W 26th Street | suite 209 | 212-741-6599

And the cherry on top, her brand spankin’ new catalogue is available for your order here and here. Or you can pick up a signed copy when you stop by Peer this week. Rachael is rockin’ and oh how proud we are!

Lee by HS Hopeful Claire Pepper

A portrait for a pleasant Friday afternoon, I offer you aspiring Hot Shot Claire Pepper. On her work, she says:

I primarily make portraits and I am interested in ideas of surface, masquerade, and performance from an everyday point of view. I often make portraits of people I know but recognize that the act of photographing them distances them from me. In this series I was photographing people I worked alongside at a part-time job in a bar; interacting with them in this space that we found ourselves trapped in for several hours a week, doing this routine job. It’s about their relationship to the place, and to me. I wanted the images to represent a certain distance between us that I experienced; although there is a lot of interaction going on it is a mask, and you don’t give too much of yourself away.

It’s the weekend, why not enter tonight!

Getting Down with the Magnum 1962 Vibe by James Felder

After a late night lying in bed, kept up by a combination of caffeine, creative juices desperately needing to be squeezed, and me jumping up every few minutes to jot down my newest and greatest plan, I have a naive question to pose for a rainy New York evening.

As artists and creative people of all shapes and sizes, we manage to generate bundles of ideas for projects we would love to dedicate the next hefty chunk of available time to. Ideas that come and go by the minute and by the hundreds, with only a small fraction being found worthy of execution - so what makes one worthy over another? Is it really that they are the best we have to offer, the projects we see having the most potential at being relevant and provoking? [I’m not so sure we always have that sort of radar.] Or is it that simply because these ideas stick around long enough to receive our love and attention, to be molded into something we think is stellar. And how many of the projects we act on are utter failures in the end anyhow, this internal radar for potentially good work often lets us down.

OK, enough. There was my day-after-a-sleepless-night attempt at offering up something insightful… And I suppose it is a moot point anyway, but it’s the thought of the hour nonetheless.

Now on that note, I offer you an image from today’s aspiring Hot Shot James Felder’s Camera Malfunction Collaborations. On the work he says, “They’re the result of freakiness going on in the camera while I shot — my gear putting its special fingerprint on our work.” One of the ideas James found worthy, it supports what he says is his main goal as a photographer: “To take pictures that subjectively capture the moment I’m living through.” Which I suppose is, to some degree, the main goal of most of us. So get ‘em out there and enter today!

What’s left by recently featured HHS! contender Aubrey Hays

Although we’ve been accepting new entries for a couple of weeks now, I’ve realized we never made an official announcements with the most important details. So…

*drumrolls, unrolling of the red carpet, general fanfare*

Ladies and Gentleman, behold! The Fall 2007 competition of Hey, Hot Shot! is now in full throttle!

Entries will be accepted here through Tuesday, November 6th. This season’s winners will be announced on the blog on Tuesday, November 20th and the HHS! Fall Showcase will take place at the jen bekman gallery from December 13th through December 16th, with an opening reception on Wednesday, December 12th from 6-8PM.

That leaves y’all one month to get crazy and creative. And, remember, its always best to get your entry in before the deadline crunch!!

So, why not enter right this minute?

Fourth Runner Up by Liz Kuball

A rerun yes, but a rerun worth another look. Hey, Hot Shot! Summer 07 Honorable Mention Liz Kuball is coming back for round two. And not only did she get her entry in early, she has also been keeping us abreast of her goings on, and my, my, my has Liz been busy.

Perhaps you recall our previous post on Liz’s work? Let me refresh your memory. A Southern California-based photographer, in her ongoing series In Store Liz scrutinizes consumer society, summing up our material nostalgia by turning her camera on the spaces we send our most special of junk to fester and die. I’ll be the first to say, I find her images a bit scolding, as I try not to recall that at the age of 22 I already have storage units in three cities across the country. Need to be reminded of the precious goods you stored away just to loose the key? Go check out the work here.

Now, allow me to take this moment to toot our horn… According to Liz’s jam-packed newsletter, not only has she been cranking out new work, but it seems her appearance on this dear blog followed by a HHS! HM got her quite a bit of attention. And I quote her, “being featured on the blog brought lots of visitors to my site, including Ian Hunter and Star Rosencrans, owners of the Shotgun Space gallery in Los Angeles, who asked me to participate in a two-person show this fall with Johanna Reed, featuring work from my In Store series.” And lucky you in L.A. - the show opens tonight and runs through the end of the month!

Inside/Outside @ Shotgun Space
2121 San Fernando Rd, Suite 11
Opening tonight! Saturday, Oct 6, 7 - 10PM

It’s always a treat to see how many super cool photographers cross our path and to see just how many of them are makin’ it happen. Because the fun doesn’t stop here, Liz also has work in two group shows opening this month.

See, Make, Document @ White Wall Gallery - Detroit
2750 Yemans Street - Hamtramck, Michigan
Opening: Saturday Oct 13, 7 - 10PM

Photography Now @ The Julia Dean Gallery
801 Ocean Front Walk Ste 8 - Venice, California
Oct 19 - Nov 30 - Opening: Friday Oct 19, 7 - 10 PM

And to top it all off, Liz has updated her website, so go take a peek and let her know what you think. [She also keeps a consistent blog worth your love and attention.] Liz, keep it up!

It’s the weekend. Time is on your side, so use it. Get it in + get it out there. Enter today!

Blockbuster by HHS! Hopeful Karen Williams

One for the regulars… Today aspiring Hot Shot Karen Williams submitted her above abandoned parking lot image dubbed Blockbuster. Karen, surprisingly, does not play a part in the Midwestern photography scene. A self-proclaimed army brat, Karen grew up all over the place, got her BFA in Texas, and now is working on the good ol’ MFA at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

She sums her work up succinctly: “My images reflect the complexity of seemingly ordinary things found during my travels.” I won’t tell you who her influences are, instead I’ll allow you the mental exercise of forming an assumed list on your own. What I will offer are some unfamiliar sentiments coming from the photographer that are not always found in the suburban decay fascination - a hope for the future, investment in the possibilities and potential that these buildings may still contain.

With or without the optimistic words, I am rather fond of the above image - it’s familiar and, well, sometimes that’s nice. It has red, it has white, it has blue, and it’s an old blockbuster too. However, I do always like the opportunity to point hopefuls back to Eliot Shepard’s words of wisdom from way back when.

Eliot also just launched an edition this week with 20×200 - check it out. And since our spotlight of the hour is without website, I point you there, to 20×200 where many a great artist can now be found and collected. Go there, but first enter now.