Artist Lecture, Penelope Umbrico, John Cameron. 10/05/09.

Today, the VCU photography department had Penelope Umbrico as a visiting artist. Her conceptual ideas were smart and interesting thoughts. Her ideas as an artist are unique, and that is always going to make her work successful. She thinks outside of the box, and focuses on the little things in photographs, that seem to be different and incorrect. Like having a cup of coffee on a pile of books for example. Publishing this, and making art out of it, is humorous and interesting at the same time.

Suns from Flickr - Penelope Umbrico I thought that she spoke well about her work. She had a lot to say, and she explained her thought process on each piece very well. She said that she looked at the number of sunset photographs on flickr over a 7 year period and how the number got higher and higher every year. To then take thousands of these images, and re-create another piece of art from it (every year) was such a great idea. I think that her presentations of her pieces of work are what makes her a successful artist. My favorite piece was of the cropped out sunset/sun photographs from flickr. I thought this piece was sorted out very well. It consisted of a lot of redish warm colors, but then there were a few blue background images, that were also placed very nicely to make a beautiful piece of art. I don't really think any of her work relates to mine. Her work is conceptual, and mine is not. But I am surrounded by conceptual art this semester, and I am starting to think how I could incorporate conceptual art in my work. It's a interesting way of showing work, and it's also fun to try and figure out what the certain piece of work may be trying to communicate. Penelope was a good speaker, and her work is successful from this.