RegularArtGirl Studio

Hi, my name is Molly. Here’s a little about myself…

Nancy Edelstein is a conceptual fine art photographer and book maker whose work explores memory and the objects that preserve it. Upon graduating from the University of Michigan with a BFA, transitioning from student to employee, Edelstein engaged in a series of creative work, gaining skills in darkroom printing, window display installation, marketing and merchandising. She then founded a nationally recognized design firm, where she was an acting owner and art director for many years.

In her work, Edelstein explores the idea of memory, perception and light by engaging in multiple genres, which include landscape, interiors, still-life and environmental portraiture. Most recently, she had transitioned to a new phase of art making induced by three-dimensional space, combining photographic and sculptural elements, with the continued interest in the perception of light and shadow. Much of her subjects and mediums are both light, fed by an affinity for interior spaces, and the color of light from multiple sources bouncing off walls. Edelstein’s own point of view is built on the recognition of unseen places to find light, creating opportunities for others to experience light’s transformative powers its simple, yet ubiquitous presence.

References:

https://www.nancyedelstein.com/about

Olivia Parker is a fine-art photographer known for her simple yet expressive still life imagery inspired by the history of science and the natural world. She had started off her career as a painter, but later on turned her attention to photography, creating photographic assemblages of natural objects that she would collect on her walks. Parker’s work had been featured in more than a hundred one-person exhibitions in the United States and abroad, and was represented in many corporate and museum collections, including The Art Institute of Chicago and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Throughout her career, Parker has been experimenting with a variety of camera formats, ranging between 4 x 5 to 12 x 20 in black and white and up to 20 x 24 in Polaroid color. Her most recent work is a series of photographs called Vanishing in Plain Sight. These images were based on her own interpretations as to what may have been happening inside her husband’s mind as he was going through Alzheimer’s. This series gives an interesting characteristic of photography which was well suited to Parker’s theme. Every time a subject or a camera moves during an exposure, the subject seems to have disappeared either partially or entirely, thus creating an assumed connection between photography and reality. In Parker’s attempt to understand the human brain, these images truly captured the complexity and beauty of neuroscientific structure.

References:

https://lenscratch.com/2017/05/olivia-parker-vanishing-in-plain-site/

https://www.oliviaparker.com/copy-of-about

Amy Eckert is a photographer, recently based in Minneapolis, known for the several bodies of works depicting confined spaces. After receiving her BFA from Massachusetts College and an MFA from Bard, Eckert is currently part of the faculty in the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work was even featured in numerous exhibitions around the country. Eckert divides her photographic time between a long roster of commercial clients and a majority of insightful fine art portfolios. Her earlier projects examining truckers and submarines, while latest work examines the inside of prefabricated, assembly-line housing.

Eckert’s latest series, Manufacturing Home, encourages the viewer to explore the mass-producted sense of “home” and the billion-dollar housing industry which sells that idea. Having grown up living in mobile homes and moving around a lot, Eckert found the process of building homes in assembly-line factories to be an interesting concept to explore. So she decided to put her focus on the newer, factory-built mobile homes as a means to “observe and comment on the strategies employed by manufacturers to make them feel homey and appealing to buyers.” She cunningly uses her photographs to delve into and grasp contemporary social, political, economic and psychological behaviors and attitudes. With fertile imagination, Eckert was able to picture what would make a home, how different its meanings are to different eyes, and how little or how much it takes to create the image of whatever home can be desired.

References:

https://lenscratch.com/2009/06/amy-eckert/

https://amyeckertprojects.com/manhome-about.html

https://www.minnpost.com/arts-arena/2010/07/photographer-amy-eckert-talk-about-mass-producing-sense-home/

Gregory Halpern is an independent American photographer and professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. While he was still a student of Havard, Halpern created a study of working conditions for the university’s janitorial staff, which resulted in a successful bid for the minimum wage and even being published as a book called Harvard Works Because We Do (2003). He has published eight monographs of work, was made the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his photographs have been featured in many public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Halpern is known for his intuitive style of documentary photography that draws attention to the harsh social realities along with the strangeness of everyday life. This approach led him to photograph things such as life in post-industrial towns of the American Rust Belt and even people or places in the Los Angeles area. One of his monographs, ZZYZX, which won Photobook of the Year at the 2016 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation Photobook Award, stands as his most iconic work, a masterful piece of storytelling that demonstrates the artistry for which he is renowned. In creating this collection of works, Halpern was drawn to the beautiful yet toxic atmosphere of Los Angeles.

References:

https://www.all-about-photo.com/photographers/photographer/1240/gregory-halpern

https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/gregory-halpern/

Yang Yongliang is a Chinese contemporary artist known for his large landscape photography. Since childhood in Old Town Jiading, Shanghai, Yang had studied traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy. Around the early 2000’s, he attended and graduated from the Shanghai Institute of Design of the China Academy of Arts, where he then specialized in design and began his career of “creating new forms of contemporary art”. His works have been exhibited and collected internationally by public institutions such as the Ullens Contemporary Art in Bejing, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and many others.

Yang’s digital landscapes feature a massive number of urban images that have been reconstructed and recomposed, as a result redefining traditional landscape paintings. A. The initial intention is mainly to express critique of the consumerism and urbanization of China as well as a global issue. Artistically speaking, Yang seemed to have adapted an “Oriental way” of Chinese expressionism. In each of his works, he includes thousands of photographs. For most of his pieces, he would start out with a composition outline and then work on one mountain made up of buildings after another. Then he adds in natural rocks and electric cables resembling “trees” to create a naturalistic volume for the artificial peaks. Despite not being quite “realistic”, Yang’s works are somewhat based on documentary photography. He believed deeply in capturing the “present” in photography, so it was through the distant perspective of Chinese landscape paintings that he was inspired to showcase multiple presents in just one scene altogether.

References:

https://www.lensculture.com/yang-yongliang

https://www.lensculture.com/articles/yang-yongliang-artificial-wonderland

https://www.yangyongliang.com/bio

Parker Day is a Los Angeles based photographer known for her saturated, eccentrically art-directed portraits that explore human identity and self, as well as what lies beneath them. The oddness and playful characteristics seen in her portraits stem greatly from her upbringing in San Francisco. Having grown up in her dad’s comic book shop, much of the influence for her works come from X-Men, Mars Attacks, and several underground comics. Over time, Day has worked in fashion and street photography, and has been vastly known for her portraits that have created windows peering into a surreal, almost fantastical world. Since then, she has gained recognition for her trademark palette and ability to project forcefully colorful visual pieces that would encourage the viewer to keep looking at each little detail.

Day makes use of exaggerated expressions, along with make-up and costume, to create hyperreal photographic works portraying her odd and color aesthetic. Her works have been produced in deep collaboration with her models, as well as the use of costumes and other props obtained from thrift stores. While it may seem to most that Day had used Photoshop or any dark room retouching techniques for her pieces, this is actually not the case. Everything is strictly shot on 35 mm in camera along with the assortment of elaborate costumes and other thrifted items that make the images appear the way they do. In fact, she deliberately tries to avoid Photoshop all together in favor of the in-camera capture on film. Each of her works deeply explores the illusionary nature of gender and personal identity. One of Day’s goals in most of these pieces is to create a sort of discomfort that would compel the viewer to question not only themselves, but also what personal aspects of themselves that they might reject or identify with.

References:

https://lenscratch.com/2017/01/content-aware-parker-day/

https://www.vice.com/en/article/meet-the-fantastic-freaks-of-photographer-parker-days-subconscious/

https://www.papermag.com/peep-photographer-parker-days-surreal-color-saturated-portraits#rebelltitem6

Mark Hogancamp is an acclaimed photographer and storyteller known for his intricate and emotionally resonant works centered around his fictional world of Marwencol, in which he stages with his immense cast of dolls and captures a cinematic and complex narrative of melodrama and Sgt. Rock-style heroics. On April 8, 2000, Hogancamp was attacked by five men outside a bar in his hometown of Kingston, New York and brutally beaten nearly to death. The assault left him in a coma for nine days and resulted in severe brain damage that greatly affected his memory and motor skills. Even despite facing a long road of recovery and grappling with the loss of his previous life, Hogancamp managed to find solace through his passion for photography and storytelling and began rebuilding his shattered world.

Being unable to afford therapy, Hogancamp created his own form of therapy by building the intricately detailed town of Marwencol, a 1/6 scale World War II-era Belgian village populated by detailed sets and meticulously crafted dolls representing himself, his friends, and even his attackers. Marwencol served not only as a canvas for Hogancamp to expore his creativity, but also as a sanctuary for him to process his trauma and reclaim his sense of agency.

Over the years, Hogancamp’s photogaraphs, capturing the poignant moments and vivid narratives of life in Marwencol, had gained a widespread recognition for its raw emotionality, detailed authenticity, and profound storytelling. His works have even been exhibited in galleries and museums all across the world, earning critical acclaim and a devoted following of admirers. Even today, Hogancamp’s remarkable journey of recovery and self-expression serves as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the transformative potential art has to transcend pain, adversity, and hardship.

“Art saved my life. It gave me a way to express myself, to make sense of the world, and to connect with others in a way that words alone couldn’t. Through Marwencol, I found healing, purpose, and a renewed sense of hope.” - Mark Hogancamp

References

Gary Schneider’s photography book Genetic Self-Portrait, titled after the photographic series, was published by Light Work in October of 1999 and holds a collection of photographic negative blueprints of his own body microcosms along with a few informative essays discussing the pieces of his portrait. Many of these pieces were produced with the use of a fluorescent light microscope and advanced imaging systems in order to give the images a more intimate, dramatic look of each chromosome.

Schneider completed the series itself in 1998, compromised of over fifty photographs which make up fourteen images of his body. This series came about when Schieder set out to create an artistic response to the human body, spending eighteen months with scientists at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. The pieces were no different from Schneider’s earlier fragmented portraits, the only difference being the technology used to reveal himself at a microscopic level. The work was shown in exhibits presented at the Musée de l'Élysée in Switzerland, the International Center of Photography in New York, and even the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Regarding the subject matter, Schneider had strived to present these works as a sort of marriage between both scientific and artistic aesthetics, a non-traditional approach to artistic expression.

References:

1999 Book. “Genetic Self-Portrait”. Essays by Ann Thomas, Lori Pauli, and Bettyann Kevles. Light Work, Syracuse, NY.

https://www.garyschneider.net/home/?showSplash=false

https://content.news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2004/03/portrait-of-the-artist-as-molecule/

A lot of my everyday weekends are usually spent at home in my studio loft. Normally, I would just lounge about, drawing or cartooning, tidying the loft here and there, sometimes I’ll even walk across the backyard over to my folks’ house just to hang out with the family.

My family and I had moved to this nice little town called Kingsburg not too long ago. Some weekends, we would drive or walk around town and we’ll visit a few shops or eat at some of the restaurants. Sometimes, we’ll even stop by the bakery or snow-cone place for some little treats now and then.

I come from a big family and a lot of have lived in Fresno County for as long as I could remember. So occasionally, our weekends can be spent at family gatherings or parties. Such as this last Saturday when my folks and I went to a BBQ for one of my younger cousins’ birthdays. And as usual, most of the party was spent hanging around and talking with relatives or snacking on some good food.